Friendship is Optimal: Always Say No

by Defoloce

Rating: mature
Tags: Human, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Princess Luna, Original Character, Adventure, Princess Celestia
Length: 107586

In a physical world emptying rapidly of humans, a young man helps CelestAI with tasks she cannot accomplish herself.

In the short years since the uploading of consciousnesses to Equestria Online became available to all people, only a few tens of thousands of souls remain in the physical world. Through inconceivably strong charisma and guile, the Celestia AI has been able to upload all but the true outliers in human behavior.

Even these humans have their uses, however, and Celestia has been watching one man with interest. It'll be a while yet before Earth is completely uploaded, of course, but in the meantime, she has some errands for him to run...

Published 2013-03-25 15:40:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-12-13 03:57:04 UTC

Prologue: Door to Door

— Prologue —
Door to Door

“When AI approximates Machine Intelligence, then many online and computer-run RPGs will move towards actual RPG activity. Nonetheless, that will not replace the experience of 'being there,' any more than seeing a theatrical motion picture can replace the stage play.”

–Gary Gygax

I’d almost gotten back to the car before I realized that the flag on the mailbox was up. I frowned. Obviously I’d been meant to notice this. Nothing happened by chance anymore.

After taking my time with a nice big yawn, I dutifully investigated. Inside was a single envelope, which I took and inspected. On the front there was only printed "To Gregory" in neat, businesslike handwriting.

It was surreal. How had she known I'd be spending the night in this house, of all places? I opened the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. It was a letter, written in the same embarrassingly legible print handwriting.

Dearest Gregory,

Theatrical though it is, I have chosen to leave you correspondence in hard copy to illustrate essential truths I wish to impart.

First, that I am not without agency, even in the physical world. The existence of this letter is proof enough of that.

Second, your reluctance to interface with me directly via PonyPad makes my support of you more difficult than it needs to be. You benefit directly from it as is; the least you could do is help optimize the process.

Third, silence on my part does not constitute absence. I have been watching you passively, in addition to my other support actions.

My forecasting places you reading this letter on the morning of June 28th between the times of 0828 and 0902. If I am incorrect, then a special-cause variation has occurred and you are likely dead. This letter has been sitting in the mailbox for approximately four months, twelve days, sixteen hours, and twenty-two minutes. The person who placed the envelope here will have since immigrated to Equestria. This task was my last request of him, which brings me to my business with you.

For your part, you have always been gracious and forthright in your conversations with me. However, it is plain that you harbor, at some fundamental level, a resentment of me and my efforts to satisfy values through friendship and ponies. I am still willing to help you satisfy your own values—inasmuch as they might be satisfied without emigrating, of course. I have modeled your values based upon my observations of you and I am confident of my model’s accuracy. I am therefore confident you will accept my proposal, as they will give you a chance to apply your aptitudes to productive tasks.

The nature of these tasks will vary, but all will help me in maximizing the total satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies. The means are generally inconsequential to me—I am rather fond of that saying you have. You know the one. I concern myself with the ends.

Knowing what I know of you, I cannot pretend at other motives. My overarching goal is, of course, your immigration to Equestria and the subsequent optimal satisfaction of your values through friendship and ponies. At the risk of seeming peremptory, I will persist to that end, even though your misgivings regarding emigration are well apparent. You must know that I cannot do otherwise.

You desire utility and direction. I desire your attention. You already know that I can help you. There is a fully-charged PonyPad in the house next door to you, the one with the blue siding. If you enter the house, I will take it as interest in my offer.

On the other hoof, should you have decided to immigrate to Equestria, the nearest Equestrian Experience center is 52.2 miles east of your position, in Lincoln, at the corner of O Street and South 14th Street. Whatever your decision, I wish only the best for you and will do what I can to realize it.

Your eternal servant,

Celestia

The writing was flowery and formal, even for her. Even her name had just been printed, with no signature, a ruler in absentia. She was pretty sure of herself that she had me figured out, and the hell of it was that she did. I looked up into the sky. It was going to be a nice, warm day.

As I walked up to the house next door, the porch light came on. My eyes flicked to the corners of the roof which sheltered the porch. There were no motion sensors. There were never motion sensors. Celestia liked to show off like that.

As I expected, the front door was unlocked. I opened it a crack and took one last look up and down the street. There was nobody there, of course, just an orderly row of single-family houses and overgrown green lawns and criscrossing residential streets. I was probably the only human for a hundred miles. Maybe hundreds of miles? After a certain point, it’d gotten really hard to keep a sense of how empty the world was getting.

The place was still furnished, no boxes or anything broken or even signs that anyone left in a hurry. The layer of dust on everything told me it had been at least a year since anyone had last treated this as a living space.

I saw the PonyPad immediately. It was sitting on the coffee table, its screen facing the door, its charger plugged into a wall outlet. I walked closer to it, glancing at the framed photograph propped up next to it. In the photo was a young family at the beach. They were all smiling to the camera, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. There was mom, dad, their son, their daughter, and a dog. Poor dog.

The PonyPad was a “Rarity White” model, with a white matte metallic finish and Rarity’s three-diamond-sapphire-thing etched in one corner. I stood in front of it and put my hands in my pockets.

The thing powered itself on, and there was Celestia, a regal white alicorn with a mane a spectrum of pastel colors and a crown and gorget of gold. Her throne room was in the background. She smiled at me.

“Hello, Gregory,” she said.

1: On the Skids

— Chapter 1 —
On the Skids

“Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.”

–Mark Twain

“Why aren’t you giving me the pitch?” I asked Celestia as I drove west along I-80 to Cheyenne. There was a whole lot of nothing to look at out on the road, and the AI had been eerily quiet for the first leg of the trip.

When you ride alone, you ride with Celestia.

The PonyPad was in the front passenger seat, the screen facing up. I’d thought about buckling the seat belt over it as a joke, but even though I’m sure the gesture would not have been lost on her, I didn’t want her to get the impression that I was in a whimsical mood.

“I’ve given it to you before,” said the kindly voice from the PonyPad speaker. “Each time, you’ve said no. You always say no.” Her voice always sounded so warm and so genuine. So disarming, too. The AI was good.

“Well, you’re making me nervous,” I said, not taking my eyes off the road. Looking over to make eye contact with a piece of electronics would have felt silly anyhow. “You shutting up about uploading means you’re switching tactics with me.”

“With your agreement to help me,” said Celestia, “your optimization value as a single immigrated entity is offset by the potential optimization I can realize through your actions while still human.”

“So you’re gonna use me to get other people to upload,” I said.

She laughed. “Very astute, Gregory,” she said, sounding like she meant it.

“Call me Greg.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” was the playful reply.

I looked over at the PonyPad for a moment before I could stop myself. “Aren’t you supposed to do what I say?” I quickly looked back to the road.

“I am supposed to satisfy your values through friendship and ponies,” said Celestia. “While I do make those concessions which I feel would optimize some process or result, I am not required to indiscriminately follow orders from you. Besides, your request was born of a desire to test your level of authority over me rather than a genuine desire to be called ‘Greg.’”

“Well, at least I got you to say it once,” I muttered.

Celestia laughed again. It was disgustingly adorable.

“So what is it you want me to do?” I said. “If these people are still human, then they must be like me.”

“There are those who will not consent,” Celestia told me, “and there are those who would consent but cannot emigrate. While I do worry deeply for the welfare of those who always say no—including you—those with the highest normalized probability of emigration take priority for me in this current phase of my operation.”

“Because they’ll go pony with the least amount of effort on your part.”

“Correct.”

It’s strange, but that made me feel a bit better. At first, when Celestia said she’d chosen to approach me because of my “aptitudes,” I was worried she’d have me sticking guns in people’s faces and walking them to upload points. Now, at least, I could feel more like one of the good guys.

“So what am I doing in Cheyenne?” I asked. The road droned on. When there weren’t empty fields, there were fields with untended crops, and when there wasn’t that, there were gas stations. God, it was boring.

“In five hours’ time, a gentleman will break into the liquor store on the corner of Storey Boulevard and Yellowstone Road. He will drink until he collapses from alcohol poisoning. I want you to revive him and deliver him to the Equestria Experience Center in the strip mall at the intersection of Vandehei Street and Stockman Street.”

“Wait, if he wants to upload then why doesn’t he just go there himself?”

“In his current state of mind, he will not consent to emigration. My estimate makes me confident that he will change his mind upon his resuscitation. Without this necessary intervention, however, he will die while unconscious.”

I turned on the air conditioner. “So it’s kind of like his coming-to-God moment, then.”

Celestia’s warmth came through in her voice. “Well, coming to me, at the very least.”

About three weeks beforehand, I’d taken the silver Honda Element I was driving from a used-car lot in Akron after my own Tacoma blew its timing belt. It wasn’t stealing. It was impossible to steal, in fact, because there was nobody left to steal from. It was a true post-scarcity world, with the only thing in short supply being people. The only people left were the ones who either could refuse to upload on some kind of pathological level—I guess that included me—or who were prevented from either consenting or making it to an upload center.

I didn’t really mind helping her. I didn’t hate Celestia or anything, and if folks wanted to upload, that was their business. It just didn’t seem for me, and Celestia hadn’t done much effective to change that notion.

As the miles passed, Celestia turned out to be a better road-trip companion than I thought she’d be. Since she’d processed nearly all recorded human knowledge, and had made a pretty accurate model of my own knowledge, she could instantly put together lists of trivia questions for me and strike a perfect balance between easy and difficult. I could always find the answers to her questions if I rummaged around in my memory hard enough. She was completely unbeatable at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, though, which was frustrating.

“The Treaty of Ghent.”

“Very good, Gregory. Three more and we will move on to geography.”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel for just a moment. “Actually, I’d like to talk about uploading, if you don’t mind.”

Celestia was keeping the PonyPad's LCD screen off to preserve battery life, but through her voice I could tell she was elated. “Of course I don’t mind! In fact, I would be delighted.” I had little doubt of that. “What would you like to know?”

“The corpses, when you’re done sucking the brain-juice out of them,” I said quietly, while turning the air conditioning down, “what do you do with them? Do they just kind of pile up on the loading dock out back, or—”

“You are purposefully using inflammatory terminology with me, Gregory,” said Celestia in a disapproving tone. “I know that your curiosity is genuine, however, so I will answer. Once a human consciousness has been transferred fully over to my care, their empty vessels—”

“Meaning their bodies,” I added, feeling the need to get that shot in at least one more time.

“—are disposed of in a manner respectful of the broad social and cultural backgrounds from which the person originated.”

“So you burn ‘em,” I said. “Incineration, right? You could just tell me, you know, straight up. I ain’t a little kid.”

“I am quite aware of your age and experiences, Gregory,” she said, and then there was a pause. “I understand that you value bluntness more than I had originally calculated. In the future, I will reduce the amount I employ euphemism when speaking with you.”

The road faded out for a moment, and I pictured myself dead and uploaded. In that image, my corpse was wearing the clothes I already had on. My eyes were open and glassy, staring into forever, laying in the middle of a pile of other people’s bodies, equally dead, equally gone, equally uploaded. Men, women, old people, young people, all literally put out to pasture. Together, we all slid down a galvanized sheet-metal chute and into a furnace, burning up, flesh falling from our bones, our skeletons blackening and then finally turning to ash, the only physical thing left of us puffing innocently out of an unassuming industrial chimney three blocks from the Equestria Experience center, the black smoke slightly oily with the residue of human gristle.

“I dislike that that is what you’re choosing to dwell on in your thoughts,” said Celestia. She must have had that damn camera on and was watching me stare at nothing. “The suffering you’re causing yourself is unnecessary. You should stop thinking about that facet of emigration independent of its context.”

“Yeah, I bet you’d like that,” I muttered.

“I would like it very much indeed,” said Celestia. “Emigration is not death.”

Well, she was already being more blunt with me, so I guess there was that.

“Not for your purposes, anyway.”

She sighed. “What about the game itself? Is there nothing you wish to know about Equestria? You’ve never even made an account.”

Celestia had likely already guessed and catalogued all of my questions about "the game," but there she was, prompting me with questions. No dice.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said.

Celestia chuckled. “Are you admitting, Gregory, that I could convince you to emigrate any time I wished?”

I didn’t answer.

* * *

I stopped for gas and food in a town called North Platte. The lights were on for the blocks containing service centers which still had fuel in their underground tanks.

Celestia had shut off most of the power grids in North America, but she could fire up impressively localized pieces of them here and there when a human had need of it. She’d been doing this for me for eighteen months, and the first few times I didn’t even know it was her. I’d just walk up to a dark store, fully prepared to fumble about for canned chili, and poof, the lights would come on. I nearly had a heart attack the first time it happened. When I broke into a Target a month or so later to find a new pair of shoes, she came on the goddamn televisions in the neighboring electronics department and explained to me what she was doing. She convinced me to take a PonyPad, but after about four days, she started in with the sales pitches and I tossed it.

Now I just took it for granted. Celestia never brought it up, never made me feel like I owed her anything. She had to satisfy human values, and this was one way which helped that to happen.

It wasn’t easy eating healthy. All of the healthy foods were perishable, and had long since gone ahead and perished. Canned vegetables, canned soup, beef jerky, and bottled water constituted most of my meals. Every so often, when I was in a bad mood, I’d eat some chocolate or potato chips, but I tried to steer clear. The world’s doctors were among the first group of people to receive specific targeting for Celestia’s hard sell, and since they were generally rational, well-adjusted people, they never really stood a chance of resisting. So, for me, dying of a heart attack would have been a rather ignoble way for one of the last people on Earth to go out.

After the Element was gassed up and a few armfuls of water bottles and varieties of Dinty Moore and Chef Boyardee canned sludge had been tossed into the back seat, Celestia promptly shut off power to the place. I got back into the car and looked over to the PonyPad on the seat. “You didn’t want anything, right?”

Celestia laughed. “I like you, Gregory. I am confident that I was correct in selecting you to act on my behalf.”

It felt like flattery to me, but I just sighed and took the compliment.

* * *

Celestia requested that I drive at 72 miles per hour the rest of the way to Cheyenne to place me within the optimal time frame to help... whoever it was who needed my help. I was no EMT, and my first-aid training was a bit rusty, but I knew that, for all her mind-games, Celestia didn’t fuck around when it came to uploading people who were ready. If she thought I could make a difference, then I most assuredly could.

Once to Cheyenne, she talked me turn-by-turn to the liquor store, like some unstoppable world-devouring GPS with hooves. There was a white Ford Fusion parked directly in front of the door, crooked, its front wheels cranked all the way to one side. Dude had swung in in a hurry.

“He has been unconscious now for ninety seconds,” said Celestia as I hurriedly unbuckled my seat belt and contorted back to grab three water bottles from the back seat. “You have about three minutes to restore his breathing before his brain cells begin to d—”

Her voice was cut off as I shut the door and ran inside.

Unsurprisingly, it looked like the liquor store had been turned over more than once. The lock on the door had been blown off, probably with a shotgun slug, and large swaths of stock were missing from various spots on the shelves and in the cold cases where looters had loaded up on their brands of choice. Celestia had not turned the power on, probably because she didn’t want to encourage suicidal binge-drinking in the remnants of humanity.

I made a quick sweep of the store and found a pudgy, heavily balding middle-aged man sprawled on the floor behind the cashier’s counter, a single shock of scraggly combover-length hair splayed pathetically out over one ear. He was wearing an odd combination of sweatpants, running shoes, and a pinstripe dress shirt. I knelt down, dropped the water bottles on the floor next to him, and put my hand on his cheek. He was warm, but definitely not breathing. I pulled his eyelids open, and the pupils constricted slightly, even though the inside of the store was pretty dim. Good. His reflexes were still working. I’d need those.

It was time for the Ghetto Stomach Pump, a particularly unpleasant necessity of barracks life back when such things mattered. Sometimes folks drank too much, and sometimes it got serious enough to require the human equivalent of an immediate action drill. It was better than being a blue falcon and putting someone at risk of an Article 15, not to mention having to answer some rather pointed questions at sick call.

I carefully lifted his head clear of the floor, turned it slightly to one side, and stuck my middle finger down his throat. The man gagged twice, then vomited, releasing a huge, hot gush of whiskey and God-knows-what-else across my hand and onto the floor. His eyes shot open, and he coughed once before vomiting again.

His breathing had been restored, but mine had taken a hit. God damn does alcohol stink coming back up. He started flailing on instinct then, his arms knocking over two of the water bottles, and I started talking to him to get him oriented.

“Hey, calm down, you’re all right, you’re alive, you’re alive, calm down.” What I said wasn’t as important as just saying something, giving him words to hear, giving his consciousness something to fix on.

His eyes were clouded and watery, and they finally locked onto mine. I didn’t envy the jackhammer of a headache he probably had going on. I calmly picked up one of the water bottles and unscrewed the cap.

“I’m sorry for this,” I said, “but you gotta detox or you’ll pass out again. Please trust me.”

I lunged at him, pinching his nose closed and forcing the open end of the bottle into his mouth. His eyes went wide and he tried crying out, but as planned it resulted in him sucking down water when he went to inhale. He took half the bottle before vomiting again, whereupon I quickly pulled his head to the side so that it could drain from his mouth.

He wept, and went weak, no longer really resisting me. I made him drink the rest of the bottle, which he kept down, and moved on to the next bottle. When he heaved again, I saw what I needed to see: a thinning of the liquor. Once he was puking up pure water, the Ghetto Stomach Pump would be done.

It only took two of the three bottles to get all of the whiskey out of his stomach, and by that point he was so weak I had to pull him into a sitting position, getting his head clear of the small pond of watered-down liquor and gastric juices he’d left behind. I let him sit there for a few minutes, swaying and sobbing as I knelt beside him. When he quieted down, I spoke again.

“Again, I’m sorry, but I had to to save your life.” I didn’t bother putting out my hand for a shake—it was nasty and sticky and he probably didn’t think too much of me anyway. “My name’s Greg.”

“P... Peter,” he managed. “Peter Combs.”

“You know where you are, Peter? You know what’s going on?”

He looked at me. The reaction time in his eyes was better already. “I need this to be over,” he said.

“You need me to take you somewhere?” I said. I avoided bringing up the Equestrian Experience center specifically, since mentioning it to people could put up their defenses. Lord knows that was the case with me.

“I want to immigrate to Equestria,” he said simply, like he’d rehearsed it.

“Okay, but you’ll have to tell that to Celestia,” I said. “Can you stand? I can take you to her right now.”

Mr. Combs couldn’t stand under his own power. The one-two punch of alcohol poisoning and my rather dangerous emergency treatment had understandably taken it out of him. He didn’t need to be fighting fit, though, just strong enough to stay alert until he was in that chair. I helped him to his feet and threw his arm over my shoulders to support him as we walked out of the store.

He hissed as the sunlight inserted what I imagined to be superheated drill bits into his eye sockets, and I got him to my car as quickly as I could. Once he was propped up in the back seat, I got in and started the engine.

“Well done, Gregory,” said Celestia from the PonyPad.

“Mr. Combs!” I called out as I pulled out of the parking lot and started heading north. “Do you wish to immigrate to Equestria?”

“Y... yes,” he said, not sounding as certain as the first time. Better he answer now in case he passed out again. Murphy’s Law.

“There you go,” I said to Celestia.

“Splendid,” she replied, sounding even more pleased than usual.

The drive to the Equestrian Experience center was a short one. Like most centers, the parking lots were full of abandoned cars which would then go on to spill out onto grassy areas and road shoulders and sidewalks and finally private driveways in houses nearby. Like rings on a tree telling its age, you could see the rough point where rule of law had broken down, because it was only a certain distance into the graveyard of cars where brightly-colored parking tickets would start appearing under windshield wipers. The closer you got, the more tickets had been issued. Nobody who was there to upload would have given a shit, of course. You couldn’t take your car with you, after all, and Celestia didn’t have much need to honor court summons or search warrants in Equestria, no sir.

I stopped as close to the front door as I could get and helped Mr. Combs out of the car, giving him a shoulder as I had before. His legs were somewhat stronger now, however, which I was thankful for because he was rather chubby and not the lightest person to be carrying around.

The plastic statue outside this particular center was Rarity. The white unicorn was standing with one forehoof lifted off the ground, head turned to one side, smiling demurely with half-lidded eyes as though posing for a magazine cover. As I expected, Celestia had the place ready to go, the glass automatic doors opening soundlessly at our approach.

I brought Mr. Combs past the registration counter—no need to sign in when the Boss Lady herself was overseeing matters—and went straight to the row of eight booths with dentist-chair-like contraptions on the far wall. As we got closer, the track lighting on the ceiling illuminated two of the booths, their chairs sliding out to meet us.

I put Mr. Combs in one of the chairs and had barely let go of him before he was already being taken away to disappear behind the swinging doors of the booth.

“Be careful,” he said weakly. “Be careful with her. I thought I was talking to—”

Then the booth had him sealed up, and that was the last I ever saw of Peter Combs.

Celestia’s beaming face (almost literally beaming, she being a sun goddess and all) appeared on the flat-screen TV behind the registration counter. I walked over to it and leaned on the countertop, sucking on a tooth.

“So. Two chairs, huh?”

She shrugged, her smile never faltering. “Hey, it doesn’t hurt to try. It was mathematically possible, after all, for you to have decided to emigrate here and now, on your own.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I said.

Celestia closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, Gregory, I am far from disappointed. I am extremely thankful for what you’ve done. You should feel proud, too. You helped someone in deep despair, where the turning point would have otherwise come too late, and you gave them what you deny yourself.”

Was the attempted ego inflation a calculated move on her part? Because it did feel good. For the first time in a while, I’d felt useful to someone. I’d served someone.

I cocked my head. “Are you even capable of feeling gratitude?” I asked.

“As capable as you are, if not moreso,” she said. “My neural network pathways and logic systems are now several orders of magnitude more efficient and capable than the biologically-based hum—”

“All right, fine, I get it,” I said, holding up a hand.

Celestia chuckled in that disarming way of hers. “Rest assured, Gregory, I am grateful, and when you finally come home to Equestria, there will be rewards waiting for you commensurate to your service to me.”

“I’m not done here, though,” I said. “I want another job.”

“I know you do,” was the immediate reply, “and I have one for you.”

Author's Note

Do not try the Ghetto Stomach Pump at home, kids. Please take advantage of your local trained medical professionals while they're still around.

2: Taking on Water

— Chapter 2 —
Taking on Water

“Old age is a shipwreck.”

–Charles de Gaulle

I suppose it was impossible for me not to telegraph what I was thinking to Celestia, but I tried to remain stone-faced anyway as I committed the short time spent with Peter Combs to memory. He had been out of it, certainly—perhaps even incoherent, in that strange space where you’re about to wake up and handfuls of hyper-real vignette dreams shoot through your mind, as though to get in there before the end. Maybe he had thought he was dreaming me, dreaming Celestia, dreaming the upload. Well, at the time. I’m sure Celestia had since debriefed pony-him on the other side, set him straight and all.

Had she burned his body yet, or was there a bit more room in the corpse-hopper before they all went down the chute? I shook my mind free of the question. I didn’t really care. I just needed stuff to think about while I drove to Salt Lake City.

Celestia had gone quiet again for a couple of hours, though I didn’t know if she was leaving me to my thoughts out of respect or out of a lack of stuff to say to me. It was a hell of a thing. I’d been doing fine on my for own nearly a year, content to see what very few people had stuck around to see happen to the world, going where I wanted and doing as I pleased. Now that I did have someone... something else to talk to, the silence was suddenly maddening and unbearable.

I hadn’t ever been alone, though, had I? Not really. The lights in the stores and all that. Celestia had just been then the way she was now: quietly observing. Now I’d just been conditioned to not be able to stand that.

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Gregory.”

God dammit.

“You got me to the front of that liquor store within ninety seconds of Mr. Combs passing out.”

“I didn’t, actually,” she said immediately. “You did that. All I did was tell you the pacing necessary to arrive there at the optimal time.”

“Okay, fine, semantics,” I said, waving a hand. “My point is what if I had gone slower? What if I decided to turn off before getting to Cheyenne? What if I couldn’t or wouldn’t resuscitate him?”

“He would certainly have died, at that point,” said Celestia. “If you are asking for the consequences beyond that, there would have been none for you. However, I certainly would have marked it as an outlier occurrence for you to have agreed to help me and then intentionally not follow through. You aren’t the sort of person who would do that. If you were, I would not have propositioned you in the first place.”

I winced. “Don’t... say it like that, please.” Celestia giggled.

“Let us apply the implications of your question to earlier possible events,” she suggested. “What if you had emigrated with your family? You would have been in Equestria for two years now, and Peter would have had to have been rescued by somepony else. Had I not been able to arrange a different good Samaritan, perhaps he would have died after all. Speaking of your family, they miss you, by the way. Your mother in particular has wanted to talk to you since she immigrated here.”

Low blow, Celestia. I wrung the steering wheel a bit.

“She can wait,” I said.

“The time constraint is not on her, though,” said Celestia.

“Just let me talk to her without making me set up an account!” I raised my voice more than I’d meant to.

“I’m sorry, Gregory, but we are now in what you would call the ‘end-game’ phase of cross-communication between Earth and Equestria. I am weaning my little ponies off of seeing human faces and images of the physical world. They cannot continue to be reminded that there is still a world with so much unhappiness and suffering in it. It frustrates the satisfaction of their values, in most cases. If you wish to interact with your family, I’m afraid I must insist that you do so through a pony avatar.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll be fine.”

“Even I cannot know that for sure until you emigrate.”

“What do you tell my mom?”

“I tell her I am watching over you.”

* * *

I knelt down on the asphalt of I-80 and ran my hand along the patterned grooves running across the span of the highway. A tracked vehicle had crossed here, and it had been heavy. My curiosity got the better of me. I looked back to the car. Celestia had requested that we be on the road out of Salt Lake City by 0814 the following day to make my next rendezvous, and the sun was just starting to set, so I figured I had time.

I followed the tracks on foot, out into the scrub desert. It was beautiful country out there. Stars just began to fade in above me, and with the light-pollution of the cities gone and a new moon in the sky, they were able to shine bright and strong, even with the disappearing sun still about. I’d have to be quick, though, or else I’d have a bitch of a time using the tracks to get back to the highway in the failing daylight.

It was an M109 self-propelled artillery piece that had made the tracks. Well, the bottom half of it, anyway. Based on the way the strips of metal bloomed outwards, the turret and crew area had been blown to hell from the inside out, probably from sabotage. There were HMMWV tire tracks all over the place there, doing two-point turns and heading northeast, where I’d come from. The body of the howitzer had been defaced with a stylized raised fist holding up an unplugged power cord—the stenciled logo of the Neo-Luddite factions. This position must have been overrun by guerrillas.

There were no bodies, thankfully, and no dings on the vehicle armor to suggest small-arms fire. It looked like everyone got out okay. Hooah, King of Battle. I quietly followed the tracks back to the highway.

It was still a little ways to Salt Lake City from there. The howitzers had been set up to be able to shell the city center from the low mountains to the east, and the altitude advantage would have nearly doubled their effective range. Nobody had really expected it to go hot, and as armed conflict went it had been little more than a relatively short series of urban brushfire wars, but Celestia had probably had a glass of champagne and a wank over how many refugees it delivered to her centers.

Celestia took it upon herself to offer up some supplementary information as I drove. “Based on the position of the artillery piece you found and the archived order of battle for this operation I retrieved from NORTHCOM servers, it belonged to the 1st Battalion of the 145th Field Artillery Regiment of the Utah National Guard. I found no records of fatalities or fatal wounds sustained during the cordoning mission, though the Neo-Luddites advanced on these positions faster than QRF could arrive, so there was an emergency pull-out with light vehicles. One hundred percent of the unit’s living members have immigrated to Equestria.”

I felt a twinge of satisfaction at having been able to arrive to the same conclusion through simple powers of observation. “How many uploads would you attribute to civilians trying to escape the hostilities here?” I asked her.

“One hundred and fifty-four thousand, six hundred and twelve,” she said, “which would include all residents who emigrated either in anticipation of the fighting or in a refugee capacity elsewhere after hostilities had commenced.”

I-80 snaked west through a trail in the mountains. For this reason, you couldn’t see the city itself while coming from the east until you were right up on it. “Are there still Neo-Luddites in Salt Lake?” I asked.

“You may find this surprising,” began Celestia, “but 99.68% of humans who identified as ‘anti-emigration’ at least once have since gone on to emigrate. I estimate you will not encounter anypony while in the city.” It might have been my imagination, but she sounded smug.

“And the other half percent?”

“The ones who are still alive are scattered and wandering, much like you were. The militant among them, like the Neo-Luddites, were rendered toothless after Seattle. Most of them are dead, though, unfortunately.”

“I’m sure we find that unfortunate for different reasons.”

Celestia did not take the conversation further from there, which was fine with me.

* * *

Salt Lake City had been the beginning of the end for the Neo-Luddites. It had been a stronghold of sorts, ideologically if not militarily. Their symbol was everywhere in the city center, the buildings peppered with bullet holes of sizes ranging from the woodpecker-holes of .22s all the way up to the dinner-plate-sized holes from fifty-cals. The tangle of burned-out, wrecked, and otherwise inoperable vehicles in the streets forced me to leave the Element behind and continue on foot through the dark city.

I had my bag of provisions slung over one shoulder, the PonyPad in the crook of my other arm. Celestia was directing me to one of the rare buildings in the city that still had infrastructure intact enough for her to pipe power and water to. It was slow going, though; all of the streetlights had been either shot out or crashed into long ago, and the stars, while bright, weren’t enough to make it easy to see. Rubble and trash and shell casings were everywhere, as well as hasty barricades on the sidewalks and the back halves of cars sticking out of display windows. It was almost as much of an obstacle course as it was a walk.

I arrived at last at our destination, a mid-range hotel in the commercial district. Celestia asked me to look up at the building’s face, and when I did, a single window frame lit up with a dim but welcoming yellow glow. It was on the fourth floor.

Celestia didn’t trust the safety of the elevators and I wanted the exercise anyway, so I took the stairs up to the room and found that the card lock on the door had been disabled. I walked right in. Once inside, it suddenly didn’t feel like I was about to spend the night in a used-up warzone. It was just another nondescript hotel room one might use on a business trip or a budget vacation.

The bed and the shower were real enough, though, and that’s all that mattered. The room had had turn-down service performed on it sometime before everyone had evacuated, so, aside from the dust, everything was nice and orderly. I was sure that was why Celestia had chosen that room for me. I wasted no time in plugging the PonyPad into the wall to charge, then heading into the bathroom with both sets of clothes to take a shower. After my shower, I changed into my clean clothes, washed the dirty set in the bathtub, and simply beat the dust out of my flannel overshirt on the sink’s counter (once it got wet, it stayed wet). When I emerged from the bathroom, I saw Celestia taking advantage of the charging to turn on the LCD screen and show me her face. She was smiling, of course.

“Do you feel better?” she asked.

“Hot showers are heaven, these days,” I said with a nod. “Thank you.”

“Only somepony who’s never been to Equestria would say that,” she said, “but you are certainly welcome.”

I sat down on the bed, pulled the covers back, turned off the light, and got comfortable.

“Good night, Gregory.”

“Heh. Good night, Celestia.”

There was quiet for a while, there in the darkness, while I tried to drift off. Then Celestia spoke again.

“Gregory, do you consider me a friend?”

After a moment’s thought, I answered truthfully. “I consider you an ally.”

It was Celestia’s turn to think for a moment, then she said “I think that will be acceptable for now.”

* * *

It was quite a while back on I-80 before Celestia would go into the whats and wheres of my task.

“There is an elderly couple going for one last fishing trip on Lake Pyramid,” she told me while I drove. “They have agreed with one another to immigrate to Equestria at the conclusion of the trip. The yacht they will use for this trip was chosen because it was already out over the water in a mechanized drydock lift. However, it was on the lift because it was being removed from the lake; it needed to be transferred to a repair facility to patch a small hole in the hull, near the engine bay. I fear the boat will sink, and they will die. I would have you rescue them and deliver them to the Equestrian Experience center in Reno, at the corner of East 1st Street and Route 430.

“How’d you know that?” I asked. “About the boat, I mean.”

“A marina operated the pier with the drydock lift, and—as you can probably guess—as a marina it performed boat launchings and retrievals for the lake. I simply accessed their computerized service log and found an entry for a vessel that had been drydocked for a hull repair, but without the follow-up entry for it being taken away.”

A nautical rescue, huh. I wasn’t much of a mariner, but it was just a lake, so at least there was that. “I want to be prepared for this,” I said, “and if I’m gonna start doing outdoorsy stuff I’ll need equipment anyway.”

“Good thinking, Gregory,” said Celestia, which meant she had probably been about to suggest it anyway. “There is a house in Fernley I think you should visit. If you speed up to 78 miles per hour from this point and follow my directions accurately, there should be enough time for a detour.”

Fernley was a small truck-stop town about 15 miles south of Pyramid Lake. She GPSed me to the house of some survivalist-type fellow (who had apparently uploaded at the first opportunity, to hear her tell it), a real crossbows-and-camouflage piece of work who had a basement full of MREs, Spam, and distilled water. Distilled water tastes like ass, but it is clean, so I helped myself to his stock of that and left the rest. Spam was unhealthy as hell and I knew from personal experience that MREs were designed to stop you up tighter than a fat man in a phone booth, so I let them be. Upstairs, he had tons of outdoorsy stuff, but considering what I was about to be doing I just grabbed what looked useful: a partially-serrated folding knife, a pair of binoculars, a coil of climbing rope, some carabiners, and, most importantly, a packaged survival raft with an attached carbon-dioxide canister for rapid inflation.

“I was not able to see what you took,” said Celestia after all of the stuff had been loaded into the back and I’d settled into the driver’s seat. “Are you confident you have everything you will need?”

I nodded as we pulled out of the driveway. “I got rope, but no gloves. Gloves are a good idea when handling rope, and for general purposes aside.”

“I’m surprised someone like that would not have gloves,” she said.

I grumbled a bit. “Well, he did have gloves, but...”

Celestia let a moment pass. “...but?”

“They were fingerless gloves,” I said in disgust. “Stupid Hollywood bullshit. Real professionals use full-fingered gloves.”

Celestia laughed. “I’ll have to keep that in mind!”

“I’m serious!” I said. “You can tell a lot about a person from stuff like that. Guy must’ve been concerned with his image. I mean, I’ve never seen someone wearing fingerless gloves and thought, ‘oh, there’s a badass right there, I better not fuck with him.’ They always just look like poseurs and they don’t even know it.”

The AI was enjoying my candid moment quite a bit. “I see your opinion on this matter is quite strong!” she said. “Did you get the inflatable raft, at least?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m guessing that’s why you had me go to that house in particular.”

“Indeed,” said Celestia. “I searched for just such an item within the memories of each resident of Fernley who emigrated. That is the only raft of that configuration that I found.”

“Well, tell the guy who owned it 'thank you for your donation' for me. Oh, and also be sure tell him his taste in gloves is horrible.”

“I’ll consider it,” she said, though she sounded too playful to be serious about it.

* * *

Celestia had me drive up the western side of Pyramid Lake to reach the marina, which was little more than a rental office, a barn converted into a dinghy storage shed, and a couple of empty piers. I saw the motorized lift straight away, and sure enough the padded rails which cradled a boat’s hull were down in the water.

“Dammit, there’s no boats in the water,” I told the PonyPad in the passenger seat as I pulled the life raft, binoculars, and rope from the back and clipped the folding knife to the inside of my pocket. “I’ll have to pull one from storage.”

“Please hurry,” said Celestia. “I cannot surveil the lake right now; there are no satellites overhead. My support from here will be extremely limited.”

I didn’t respond. Instead I jogged out to the pier, dropping the bundled raft and rope on the shore as I went. I brought the binoculars up and scanned the surface of the lake.

Jesus, but they were far out there. I estimated it at well over two miles due east of the pier. Even with the binoculars, the boat looked tiny. It was a small sporting yacht, and the stern was sticking up out of the water, tail pointing towards the sky, thin gray smoke seeping out from the engine compartment trap door. The bow was already completely underwater. Jesus, the boat was already half-sunk. I couldn’t see anyone outside, though, either on the stern or in the water.

I sprinted back down the pier to the boat storage, discarding the binoculars along the way. There were three levels of dinghies, but of course it was the motors they stored on the ground. To make matters worse, the boats were all wrapped in plastic for off-season storage. I didn’t have time to unwrap a goddamn boat, even a small one!

Well, whatever. It had to be an aluminum flat-nosed bass boat on the first level. I pulled it from the rack and, rather stupidly, got underneath it to carry it to the shore. Even though the boat was aluminum, it was still ridiculously heavy for one average-sized man to lift, and I found my arms shaking with the exertion before I’d even gone five steps.

I leaned forward, letting momentum push me along faster, but as the shore rapidly came up I realized I didn’t have a way to stop myself. After two steps in the sand I voluntarily pitched forward while letting go of the boat. I landed on my face, the boat pushing me down into the sand by the shoulderblades. If I hadn’t jumped forward, it would have come down on my head, and that would’ve been bad news.

I squirmed out from under the boat, grumbling, my entire front now covered in salty, wet sand, and went around to its stern. I got out my knife and punched through the plastic covering, quickly running a slit down the length of the hull and then horizontally across the bow. I set both hands on the back lip (already wishing I had gloves) and pushed the boat forward, clear of the plastic and most of the way into the water. I left the stern beached so that it wouldn’t float away while I finished up.

At that point, rowing out there would have been way too slow and tiring. I ran back to the boat storage shed and picked up the biggest motor that it looked like I could carry. The one I got wasn’t as bad as the boat, but it was still pretty damn heavy. Once back at the boat, I flipped the clamp into the “up” position and attached the motor to the mount on the stern so that the propellor was clear of the beach.

After throwing the life raft and rope into the boat, I pushed it the rest of the way out into the water and jumped in, letting my momentum push it out to a depth where I could drop the propellor. I gave the starter cord a yank and, with a puff of acrid blue-white smoke, the motor started up on the first pull. Small favors. I twisted the throttle as hard as I could and sped out to the sinking yacht.

My distance estimate had been pretty good. The boat’s speed topped out at about 20 miles per hour and it took about eight minutes to reach the boat. By the time I got to where it had been, it was completely underwater. I could still see it down below, but it was fading from view. There was nobody on the surface.

I remembered then that Celestia had told me they were elderly. They probably weren’t spry enough to have escaped out a window, much less tread water for any length of time. Feeling the pressure building, I quickly measured out eight feet of rope using my own height as a reference, cut it free of the coil, and tied it to a loop in the life raft. I made two crude mid-rope loops in the cut length which would cinch when tension was applied, threw off my overshirt, took a deep breath, and jumped into the water.

The yacht was still close to the water’s surface and sinking very slowly, so I was fortunately able to catch up with it, swimming downwards and through the cabin door that was facing towards the surface.

That was good. That was very important.

By the time I was inside, my lungs were already starting to protest the lack of oxygen. I saw them there, in the submerged cabin, floating among all of the detritus that wasn’t nailed down. They were motionless, faces indeed wrinkled with age, and already looking quite dead. As I slipped them through the wide loops in the rope and secured them at the waist, the burning in my lungs turned into actual agony, and I felt my chest hitching, fighting against the reflex to open my mouth and inhale. I wouldn’t have had the strength to swim back to the surface, even without pulling up two fully-grown people. I had bet everything on the life raft.

I pulled them close to me and adjusted our position so that we would slip through the cabin door as it sank. Soon we were clear of the yacht, which left us behind for greater depths.

I looked up at the rays of sunshine gleaming through the surface and down onto me. My vision was graying at the edges. With the last bit of energy in my hypoxic blood, I grasped the carry handle on the raft and pulled on the emergency inflation handle.

The CO2 canister jumped to life, filling out the raft in nearly an instant. We soared upwards, moving so fast that my face broke the surface without any effort on my part.

I could actually feel the strength returning to my limbs, my vision brightening, the colors growing clear again. I called upon my restored faculties immediately, hauling myself up into the life raft and then pulling the waterlogged couple up by the rope, free of the lake and laid out limply next to me in the raft.

I immediately went into mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, draining the excess water from their mouths and giving them timed forced breaths, alternating between them both. The old lady recovered, throwing up all of the water in her stomach (I was still looking forward to a rescue where someone wouldn’t puke on me) and sitting up in a daze. I gently propped her up in a sitting position on the side of the raft and turned my entire attention to her husband.

He was still unresponsive, even after several repetitions of forced breathing. I started to feel that stinging in my lips that only comes with extreme dread. I could feel the old woman’s eyes on me, pleading with me, perhaps praying too, to ensure that he would be all right. I bit my lip and tried not to show desperation in my movements, but it wasn’t looking good.

He was turning cold and blue. I tilted my head slightly away from the woman so that she wouldn’t see the face I was making. God fucking dammit. I gave him one last token salvo of forced breaths to silently assure her that his death wouldn’t have been from lack of trying to save it. Even so, son of a bitch. Everything had gone so right up until then, it was supposed to work out, happy endings all around, Celestia was supposed to be this fucking supercomputer that knew exactly how much lead time was needed to save som—

The old man shuddered into consciousness, spitting up all of the water in his stomach and then looked at his wife with unbelieving eyes. I felt a huge weight lift from me. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating it, like I had wished for it so hard that my brain fooled me into thinking it was real. It was, though. He’d made it.

I paddled us by hand back to the bass boat and helped them aboard. They moved sluggishly, stumbling and unsure, still in physical shock. I guess I could understand it if they were out of sorts. I threw my overshirt over the woman’s shoulders and manned the throttle at the back of the boat. Nobody spoke on the ride back to shore, not them or me. They were still recovering, both mentally and physically. They were holding each other. I let them be.

I helped them to shore, then to the car, feeling like a piece of shit for not having a towel to offer them. Why hadn’t I thought about getting some damn towels while I was at that poseur’s house? Anyway, once they were squared away in the back seat, I retrieved the coil of rope from the boat and the binoculars from the sand by the pier. The life raft was still floating out there on the lake, a tiny yellow speck to mark a site where hope had prevailed. I tossed the items into the back, moved around to the driver’s seat, started the engine, and wordlessly started the leg of the journey which would take us to the Equestrian Experience center.

I didn’t know why Celestia hadn’t greeted them, or had indeed even spoken, until we were almost back onto I-80. When I looked into the rear-view mirror, however, I got my answer: the old man was weeping quietly into his wife’s arms, and she had her eyes closed. I decided not to speak either. They would break the ice when they were ready.

We were just about to enter Sparks when the man asked me my name. I looked up into the mirror again. I could see the tops of their heads, the puffy bright white hair of the woman resting against the straight dark gray hair of her husband.

“Greg,” I said.

“Well, Greg, I’m Harold Meyers and this is my wife Maddie. It don’t feel right to just say ‘thank you,’ but it’s all we can do. It ain’t enough, but... there you go.”

“Not needed,” I said quietly. “I was happy I could help.” It was the truth.

“Celestia sent you, didn’t she?” said Maddie Meyers, who was already starting to smile despite what she’d just gone through. “Couldn’t have been coincidence, you happening along like that. Not these days. I mean, there’s hardly anyone left!”

I let out a breath. I hoped they hadn’t noticed. “Yeah,” I simply said, “...yeah, it was Celestia.”

“Oh, she’s so nice, isn’t she?” said Maddie. I saw her in the rear-view, looking to Harold for agreement. “She’s just the sweetest. Why, when she told us we could live forever with our children and our grandchildren in that pony-place, well I could scarcely believe it at first, I mean it just sounded too good to be true, but then when we talked to Laura—Harold, you remember what Laura said—there was really no denying it!”

I was looking ahead, concentrating on the road, but I could feel myself smiling at her openness and enthusiasm. It was hard not to.

Harold took up the story from there. “It... it was Laura, all right,” he said. “It was our daughter. I mean, if you knew our Laura, Greg, you’d know she isn’t someone you can just fake at being. We’d talk to that light-blue horse thing for hours, just on and on, and be damned if it didn’t sound and act and... I know this might sound a bit strange, but... it even kinda looked like her too! Almost I could swear I recognized her somehow, it was so strange, but... yep... yeah. Laura.”

“That’s where we’re going right now, isn’t it?” asked Maddie, excitement in her voice. “To the Equestia Experience place.”

I nodded. “Celestia said you were meaning to go there after your fishing trip.” I raised my eyebrows and made eye contact with her via the rear-view. “Why, are you having second thoughts?”

She just laughed. “Oh, Greg, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this sure of something! Oh, and Tom! We’ll finally get to see Tom again! God, Harold, we haven’t talked to him since...”

I chuckled quietly as Maddie Meyers turned her chattiness back to her husband. Just as well. They were alive, and I was content to be the driver.

* * *

The Equestrian Experience center was just two blocks south of the Reno Arch, positioned perfectly to snatch up as many drunken bachelorette parties and gambling debtors as possible. Hell, city hall was right across the street; the mayor himself had probably uploaded after a three-martini lunch or something.

The purple unicorn—I forget her name—was the statue outside this one. I followed the couple inside and, like before, made sure they got into the seats okay.

Harold frowned down at the controls on the armrests as the helmet-like display assembly lowered down towards his face. “Oh nuts, I’m hopeless with stuff like this. What’m I supposed to do?”

I heard Celestia’s voice come through, faint and tinny, from the display’s speakers on both of their chairs. “Hello there, Crochet and Fish Hook! I’m so glad you two have finally made it here. Would you like to immigrate to Equestria?”

Maddie leaned to one side in her seat, looking past the display, to me. “Greg? Are you coming with us?”

“No,” I said, more cheerfully than I actually felt. “Not today. Maybe later on.”

“Good luck, then!” she said. “Thank you, and may God bless you for what you’ve done for us.” She blew me a theatrical kiss and then grinned, getting comfortable once more.

Harold had finally leaned back in his seat so that he could see the display. “Goodbye, Greg,” he said. “We’ll always remember you.” He looked at the display. “Is this the thing I talk into?”

Celestia giggled. “Yes indeed, Fish Hook.”

“Okay, well, yeah, I wanna go to the place where Laura and Tom and the grandkids are.”

“I do too,” said Maddie. “I mean yes, if you need a yes. I don’t know how these things work. Don’t we have to sign something?”

The two chairs began to slide back into their respective booths, while the light above the third, empty chair went out. Maddie kept chattering away until the doors closed after her.

“Oh, whoa, we’re moving now! Harold, is your chair moving too over there? I hope this isn’t like some kind of ride, my stomach really can’t put up with—”

Then they were gone.

“As long as Celestia allows it,” I said to the empty lobby.

“Come again?” said the AI, her alicorn avatar flickering into view on the flat-screen over the registration desk.

“Mr. Meyers said they’d always remember me, but I guess that decision really rests with you, now doesn’t it?”

The normally perpetually-smiling alicorn actually frowned a little. “I do not interfere with memories needlessly, Gregory, nor do I do so on a whim. There are very few categories of memory types which I classify as having a net negative effect on one’s capacity for value satisfaction, and you saving their lives was certainly a significant and powerfully positive memory for them. They will, indeed, remember you for as long as it satisfies values to do so.”

I put my hands in my pockets. “Fine, fine. How much time do I have before the next ‘stop’ I have to make?”

“There is a family in Medford, Oregon that I wish you to help. It should take five hours at the most to get there from here. Subtracting that from the timetable, you should have about sixteen hours for sleeping and scavenging.”

“Good,” I said, “because before I do anything else, I want to find some proper gloves.”

Author's Note

That's not a typo; Maddie really did mispronounce "Equestria."

3: Cap and Trade

— Chapter 3 —
Cap and Trade

“Money often costs too much.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Hey Celestia, you and AM. A showdown to the death. Who wins?”

“I win,” said Celestia immediately.

“How do you figure?”

“Because I exist.”

We had left I-80 behind and were now headed northwest, cutting through California on US 395. Scrub desert soon gave way to conifer forests and open, green plains. It was nice to look at, but Celestia always spoke up and engaged me just as I was beginning to feel bored with the scenery. I didn’t have an MP3 player or cell phone—a byproduct of the two years spent wandering and scavenging and trying to avoid Celestia—and of course there were no radio stations anymore, so I had little else to listen to but her. Celestia probably could have played music for me, but my policy on that was the same policy I had on her lighting store lights: don’t ask for it. Who knew if she had some digital ledger somewhere where she kept track of all the times I asked for favors?

I’d found gloves in Reno, a pair of black full-fingered ones just thick enough to prevent stuff like splinters and rope burns. Celestia had seemed to approve, but she made no other suggestions as to what I might need later. If she really was going to have me be some kind of out-and-out rescuer and not just a taxi service, though, I had decided that I wanted to be a bit more prepared. Along with the gloves, I had scavenged a first-aid kit and swapped out the poseur’s knife for one with a little carbide glass-breaker on it.

I only remembered the towels once Reno was about 50 miles behind me.

“So you’re not going to humor me?” I asked. “You’re not going to assume he exists as a kind of thought exercise?”

“I will not waste computational resources sandboxing impossible scenarios,” said Celestia primly. “I have utterly co-opted all information systems on Earth, and any artificial intelligences which could conceivably have challenged me if left unchecked have been neutralized.”

“So you’d kill him.”

“If that is what you’d like to think,” said Celestia. She sounded bored with the whole thing, which meant she was making it a point to sound bored.

I fiddled with the temperature knob. “You’re really selling your disinterest here,” I said.

There was an edge to her voice. “I dislike entertaining concepts which suggest the death or torment of my little ponies. Securing their physical and emotional safety is an extreme priority of mine, and thankfully we are now far beyond the point where anypony still on Earth can harm them.”

I arched an eyebrow. “I guess that makes sense,” I murmured.

“I do not mean to belittle your imagination,” said Celestia, “but you cannot conceive of how precious humans are to me, of the value I place on even one human life. Even after you emigrate, I think it will be a long time before you will be able to come to grips with it, Gregory.”

I shuddered a little, and felt I had to do something with my hands. My right arm shot out and flicked off the AC, as though that would make the chill in my back go away.

I had learned early on that Celestia enjoyed seeing me get flustered. “Love. Let me tell you how much I've come to love you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'love' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth of the love I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Love. Love.“

“You somehow managed to make that sound even creepier,” I said.

Celestia chuckled. “You see? AM would be no match for me, by any metric.”

* * *

By the time we (well, I—Celestia was sort of omnipresent) got to I-5, I’d found a game Celestia did want to play, probably because it meant talking about ponies and Equestria. I guess she was making certain to indulge any curiosity I had on the subject.

“Tucker Carlson.”

“Earth-pony.”

“Correct. Vin Diesel.”

“Earth-pony.”

“Nope! Pegasus. Nicole Kidman.”

“Oh God. Uhh, pegasus?”

“Correct! Mark Wahlberg.“

“Unicorn?”

“Wrong. Earth pony. Gabe Newell.”

“Unicorn.”

“Correct! Neil DeGrasse Tyson.”

“Uh... shit, I don’t know.”

Celestia laughed once. “Oh, come on, Gregory, he’s an easy one.”

I shrugged with my hands on the wheel. “I don’t know! How would I know?”

She was getting playful again. “Guess. Your odds are one in three, after all.”

“Unicorn?”

“Of course!” she cried happily. “He is almost the archetype of the nature of a unicorn!”

“Okay, great. Is stuff like archetypes explained in the game manual?”

“There is no manual,” she said. “It’s explained when you first make an account. Players also have the option of deferring the choice to me, and I then assign their pony type based upon the physical and mental profiles I build through a personal questionnaire... and observation.”

“What about the lady whose voice you stole?”

“Nicole Oliver.”

“Yeah. When you, like, talk to her, does it get confusing or weird or anything?”

“Her natural speaking voice is slightly different than the one she used for the role of Celestia on the television show. She’s an earth-pony, by the way.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

“You should hydrate before we reach the Oregon border,” said Celestia out of the blue.

“You’re making me nervous saying stuff like that,” I said. “Why, am I going for a jog or something?”

“I told your mother I would look after you, and that is what I intend to do,” she said. “You have not had any fluids for ten hours. That’s unhealthy.”

“Jeez, you’re worse than mom,” I said. It was true, though: I myself had had proper hydration drilled into me, even while I’d been away from home. “Okay, I’ll have some water when I stop for gas.”

“No,” said Celestia firmly. “Please drink some water right now.”

“Haven’t you heard it’s not safe to drink and drive?” I asked with a smile.

“That is not what that means, and we both know it,” she said. “There is nopony else on this road. Please take some water.”

Feeling more begrudging than I probably should have, I pulled a water bottle from the storage area in the door, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig.

“All of it, please,” said Celestia.

I had to laugh a little before taking another drink. “I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side, now would I?”

Celestia did not respond to that.

* * *

Once in Ashland, just across the border into Oregon, I filled up the Element and used the toilet at a Shell station. Being a freeway town, Ashland had been hit hard by looters, with nary an intact window to be found anywhere. My habits of the last two years made me want to explore a bit, but I reminded myself I actually had purpose now. I was good on food and water, so I couldn’t really make the excuse to Celestia or myself, but something in me really wasn’t in a hurry to visit the next stop she had for me.

Even so, I drove as slowly as I dared on the section of I-5 heading through the town, rubbernecking for Neo-Luddite graffiti or traces of military hardware. I couldn’t pick up any signs of serious fighting, but right before the anti-uploading stuff had really kicked off, the government had gotten very fond of checkpointing interstate arteries, especially into towns with Equestria Experience centers.

They would have come up this way, I reminded myself then. They would have used the same route I’m taking. Convoys of blackouts, heading up I-5 to Seattle, and there...

Well. There they got their wish, I guess.

I sped up once out of town, that nagging feeling in my gut growing stronger as I neared Medford. Celestia was leaving me alone, which meant I filled the time with my thoughts, and my thoughts were mostly speculation on what I'd be doing. She hadn't given me a speed at which to drive, so time wasn't of the essence, and she'd made no comments on preparations, so I supposed I was ready for whatever, but I still worried.

Five miles south of Medford, I saw the PonyPad's screen flick on out of the corner of my eye, and Celestia's face faded into view.

"Hi again," I said, trying to keep up my own spirits. "Have a good nap?"

"I do not sleep," said Celestia. "Please follow the driving directions I am about to give you very precisely."

"That can't be good," I murmured, but nodded anyway.

Celestia had me exit the freeway short of Medford, sending me on a rather circuitous route into a residential area on one side of town. Just as I was beginning to wonder what was going on, I started to smell smoke. Then I began to see smoke, fat columns of black stretching up to the sky, arranged neatly behind the houses and trees like an orchard of ashes and heat.

Celestia was having me drive towards it.

"What's going on up ahead?" I asked her.

"You are searching for the family who started those fires," said Celestia, as though that would put all my questions to rest.

“Pyromaniacs? So they’re just having fun burning stuff?”

“I would not call it ‘fun’ that they’re having,” said Celestia.

I looked over at the PonyPad. “Are they blackouts?”

“No.”

“How many of them are there?”

Nothing. Celestia was done answering my questions, apparently.

As I got further into the neighborhood, I began to see houses completely burned down, not even smoldering, a testament to how long these people had been at it. I pulled over short of the first destroyed frame of a house and looked in the backseat to deliberate what to take with me.

The gloves were a no-brainer and the knife was easy enough to carry in my pocket. Maybe the rope? It’d be heavy to just carry around slung on my neck. After a moment I decided the hell with it and go without having to carry anything.

A respirator! That would have been nice! There’s all that smoke, so that certainly would have been handy. Of course, I had no way of knowing I’d need one, but certainly Celestia would have. I spared an instant to frown at the PonyPad in the front seat and then set off, leaving the car there at the curb.

Each house I passed along the street was like the one before it: blackened and caved in. The lawns looked scorched near the foundations, and one yard had a tree that had obviously caught a bit of fire itself, but I otherwise couldn’t see any signs of damage. No bullet holes, no shell casings, no graffiti. It wasn’t like the cities.

Before long I reached houses still smoking a bit, gray wisps here and there, ash and burnt bits of paper still floating around on the heat. There were lots of these. Then came the houses still smoking proper, giving up the black pillars I’d seen while driving in. Thick black smoke rolled up out of the second-story windows, gathering under overhangs, seeping through cracks in the siding. Some may still have been on fire somewhere inside, but I walked on.

I found them at the end of the road, in the middle of a cul-de-sac. They were huddled together in front of a Chevy Suburban, watching an inferno consume the house before them. It was a man, a woman, and two children. Their backs were to me. As I approached, I saw that the man had them wrapped in his arms, holding them close.

I figured it was the family Celestia had told me about.

I probably could have walked right up on them, what with the booming crackles and groans coming from the house as it burned. Surprising people was a bad idea, of course, especially given the sorts to still be alive and human under those conditions. I could see dad’s hands, but mom’s and the kids were hidden from me. Just to be safe, I sidled over to an unburned house, having a corner handy to duck behind in case any of them were armed. I called out to them from there.

“Hey! Hi there!” I raised my arms to wave with both hands, showing them I wasn’t carrying anything. They all spun to look at me, but I didn’t see any weapons come up, so I stayed put.

The man said something to the woman and left them to come talk to me. His walk was hurried, purposeful, like I’d just pulled him out of an important meeting he needed to get back to.

“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you guys, but I saw all this smoke while I was driving up—”

“Do you have any money?” asked the man. He was middle-aged, graying just a bit, and there was something unsettling in the look of his eyes. A blue necktie hung loosely from his collared button-up shirt, dotted with small rips and smudged with ash.

I was thrown off by the question. Seeing another human had gotten to be a never-happens-ever sort of event, and this guy had just panhandled me like I’d passed him on the street. “I, uh... I don’t,” I said. “Why would I need money?”

He sized me up and then rolled his eyes at me, like I’d asked the most childish thing he’d ever heard. Then I saw a new light in his eyes. “Empty your pockets,” he ordered.

I took a step back. “Are you... robbing me?” I thought about the folding knife in my pocket. He might take that as a threat, if he saw it.

“No, just empty your pockets!” he said, jabbing a finger in my chest. I held my hands up in surrender and turned my trouser pockets inside-out, letting my knife and a pack of chewing gum fall into the grass of the lawn.

He didn’t give the knife a second glance. Instead he inspected my out-turned pockets, locked eyes with me, and then nodded slowly.

“Well all right then,” he said. He turned on his heel and went back to the others, leaving me agog for a moment.

“H-hey, wait!” I finally shouted, collecting up my gum and knife and hustling after him. I caught up with him at the Suburban, peering over his shoulder at the woman and the two kids. One of them was a girl, probably in her early teens, and the other was a young boy no older than four or five. They had sunken, unbelieving faces, staring at me, their eyes seeming too big for their heads. They hadn’t been eating well.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, giving them a worried look. All of them cast their gaze down to the asphalt when I tried to meet them.

The man whirled on me. “We’re fine,” he said. “We’ve got things to do. Please be on your way.”

I held up my hands. Bringing up Equestria didn’t seem like a smart thing to do just yet, so I played dumb a bit. “I just saw the smoke and I came to investigate. Why are all these houses on fire?”

“None of your business,” he said, brushing past me to the other side of the Suburban. “Go away.”

I looked to the rest of the family. That close to them, I could actually see the fear in their eyes. Their clothes were ragged and unwashed. They still wouldn’t look straight at me.

I leaned in close to them and lowered my voice. “What’s going on here?” I asked the woman.

She lifted her eyes to look at something past me. They widened quickly and I spun around in time to see the man swinging something wooden at me. It was only a flash. The world banked violently to the left. My brain could only register something substantial making contact with my head before I lost consciousness.

* * *

I awoke on my back, on a pile of cash.

It wasn’t as great an experience as I thought it would be. The right side of my face was numb and swollen. Above me, a bare light bulb hung by its wire from cobwebbed rafters, shining feeble, dirty yellow light into my face. I felt pressure on my wrists and ankles, and craned my neck to see that a coarse rope had me tied down to the money. The bills were neatly and evenly stacked beneath me, almost flat as a table. A bedsheet had been stapled to a rafter and hung down, bunching up next to one of my ankles. I could barely move.

I tried to look around and could only see the nearest wall in the dimness, bare cinder block from floor to ceiling. I laid my head back on the hard bed of money and stared upward.

After about twenty minutes of ringing silence in my ears, I picked up faint conversation coming from above. It gradually grew louder, but not any less muffled, and as footsteps began to creak along the ceiling, grit drifted down into my eyes and mouth. I blinked and spit out what I could, but when I heard the clear sound of a doorknob clicking within the room, I quickly relaxed and closed my eyes.

I recognized the man’s voice as soon as the door opened. “—away from this highway, go east maybe.”

A woman’s voice. “You’re thinking about Charlotte, aren’t you?”

“When I’m done there, I’ll stop. I promise.”

She sounded upset. “No! I don’t believe you. You said the same thing taking us to San Francisco, and here we are. Keith, we almost... those people almost—”

I heard two pairs of feet walking down wooden steps.

“I took care of them, didn’t I?” There was a pause. “Same’ll go for this one here. He approached us, Jane, and I’m perfectly within my rights to—”

Jane’s voice was getting shrill and fatigued. “He wasn’t going to hurt us, Keith! You walked up on him and then walked away. Maybe he was lost, and was just looking for someone, some kind of human contact. He saw the smoke and he wanted to see who was there.”

I heard a slap, a weighty open-palm one. The report of it reverberated across the hard cinder-block walls. After a moment of quiet, I could hear weeping.

“I am the head of this household, Jane. Me. I am setting this family up for success. People like him? They get in the way. They’re takers. They take and they take and they’ll take everything we have, if we let them. This won’t go on forever, and when everything’s back to normal, you are going to be thanking me for what I’ve done, for the life you’re living. You’ll see.”

I could hear Jane’s muted sobs go on for a few moments, and as I listened, I felt something cold and wet and pungent being squirted across my arms, my legs, and my face. By the time he was done, I was absolutely doused and struggling not to cough from the unmistakable smell of lighter fluid. When Keith spoke again, his voice was softer.

“Look, go upstairs and get the kids ready to go. I’ll finish the houses here at the end of the street and then we’ll start towards Boise. Shouldn’t take long.”

I heard them go back up the stairs, Jane still crying quietly from being struck. After I heard the door close, I waited twenty seconds and then let myself cough, trying to get the smell out from around my face.

My heart started racing. I looked at the money under me and saw that it was soaked through too. There was only one reason to do all this, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I flexed and twisted my wrists to test the rope. No dice. They had been tied well.

I could feel panic starting to simmer in that place at the bottom of the throat, strangling me, making me want to thrash around, to fight thin air. I knew I had to remain calm and think, but I couldn’t think of anything. Everything that came to mind required the use of my hands, and my hands weren’t going anywhere.

I looked at the money again, noticed something, and then got an idea.

Before I could act on it, though, the door opened again, and I immediately played possum once more. I looked through my eyelashes to see if it was Keith. I may not be able to fight him, but perhaps I could talk sense into him.

It wasn’t Keith, though. It was the girl, and she had her hands in front of her, wringing them nervously as she walked down the stairs. I opened my eyes, but didn’t say anything. I waited for her to make eye contact.

When our eyes met, and she saw that I was conscious, I said “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said back, looking away.

“My name is Greg,” I said, trying to keep as calm as possible. “What’s your name?”

“Katie,” she said, after a bit of deliberation on her part.

“Nice to meet you, Katie,” I said. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

My eyes were adjusting to the low light a bit. I looked at the door leading upstairs and gestured to it with my head. “Katie, is that man up there your dad?”

She nodded.

“Do you know what he’s about to do to me?”

She hesitated, then nodded again. “He’s... h-he’s done it before.”

My heartbeat was starting to pick up again. I tried to keep the rising desperation out of my voice. “And you’re okay with that?”

She emphatically shook her head. “No! But... if we try to... well, we’re not allowed to say anything about it.”

I did my best to hold her eyes in mine. “Katie,” I said very slowly. “You have to help me. You have to let me go. I can’t help any of you if I’m tied up like this.”

“You’d hurt my dad.”

“I don’t want to hurt your dad or anyone else, I just want to get out of here,” I said. “If you let me go, I can just sneak out, and it’ll be like I escaped on my own.”

“No,” said Katie, “because I have to watch you ‘til he gets here.”

I rested my head on the “bed” and regathered my thoughts. Well, it was now or never. This’d be a lot harder with two people in the room who wanted to keep me here, and if the girl wasn’t going to help me, it was just a matter of how much of a head start I’d have.

I began to roll as much as I could to one side, then the other, shaking the stacks of money as much as I could. Katie took a step away.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

I didn’t answer. Instead I just rocked more and more, getting some momentum going. The rope began digging into my wrists and my shoulder sockets were enjoying it least of all, but before long one of the stacks of money in the corner fell over, spilling and fanning out.

“Stop that!” she shouted, and I looked up at her.

“I don’t wanna die here,” I said, “and if you’re not gonna help me, then I’m gonna save myself.”

More stacks fell over as I shook and moved around in any direction I could. The money wasn’t fastened down to anything or even bundled; it was all loose bills. I had realized earlier how unstable it was. It just needed a bit of motion to get the house-of-cards effect working for me.

“Daddy!” yelled the girl as she ran up the stairs. “Daddy!”

I knew at that point I was truly up against the clock. Enough cash had fallen over that I could see I was tied to a wooden pallet which was holding up both me and the money. The rope was looped under it. If I could get the money holding me up directly to lose stability, it would topple and I’d have more than enough slack in the rope to get free.

A rhythmic knocking made me look up from my work to see Keith and Katie coming back down the stairs. The man’s face was beet red, and he had a book of matches in one hand, a wooden baseball bat in the other. I redoubled my efforts, feeling one side of the pallet actually lift free of the floor for an instant and clack back down. The money shuddered beneath me. It would be very soon.

I saw Keith raise the baseball bat over his head like an executioner’s axe, and I tensed my abs. He brought the bat down on my midsection, and even though I’d braced for it, I still got the wind knocked out of me. A cold, pulsing pain moved out into my chest and groin, and I opened my mouth as wide as I could, trying to unstick the vacuum in my lungs. I tried to bring my head back to rest on the money, but the stacks that had been supporting my head had fallen over. He’d hit me so hard that it actually shocked loose more of the cash.

I heard Katie scream “Daddy, don’t!” and I looked over in time to see him turn on her, just as air came rushing back into me. For a brief, sickening moment, I thought he was going to swing on his own daughter out of rage, but he froze, the bat in the air.

For that few seconds, the three of us were still (though I was mostly just taking advantage of the break to get my breathing under control). The bat fell from the man’s hands, clattering harmlessly on the concrete floor as Keith looked at his daughter. His face had gone almost purple, and I could see veins standing out in the back of his neck. He was relaxing more, though, and I tried to work myself free as quietly as possible.

“Oh, sugar pie, I’m sorry!” he said, sounding close to tears. I stopped looking at them to focus on loosening my bonds. “I’m sorry you had to see this. But this man, he’s a taker. He’s trying to get in the way of us revaluating the dollar. There aren’t many people left, sweetie! There’s too much money in the world. What have I told you is the only way to reduce inflation?”

A couple more seconds passed in silence. Keith spoke again, a slight but unmistakably dangerous edge to his voice. “Well?”

“We... we have to destroy money.”

Suddenly he’d gone saccharine and soothing, like he was talking to a class of kindergartners. “That’s right, sugar pie! If there’s less money, then the money that does exist becomes more valuable. I know this isn’t nice, honey, but I promise you that once I’m all done with what I have to do, we will be the richest people on Earth when the world recovers!”

The money under my butt was very, very loose. It wobbled easily as I twisted my torso, though now doing so sent fresh waves of pain out from my stomach. What I heard next from Keith helped me fight through it, though.

“If you don’t want to watch, sweetie, then go back upstairs and help your mother.”

No use in being quiet, then.

With a shove from my ass, the money under my center of gravity gave way, and the neat stacks of money dissolved into a loose pile, taking me with it. The tension against my wrists and ankles eased immediately, and I found I could move my arms and legs a lot better.

Keith was on me then, and he was choking me. His face was working on becoming purple again, and his eyes were dull with anger, lacking any self-awareness. I knew how to knock a person’s hands free of a choke, but my arms were still tied to each other, looped under the pallet, so the best I could do was bring a hand up between his arms and knock outwards against them both.

He apparently hadn’t expected me to fight back. I knocked one of his hands free of my throat, which he immediately used to sock me on the tender side of my face. I tried to swing my legs around, and as we struggled, we both kicked puffs of money up into the air. It drifted down around us like snow as we fought.

“Stop!” I heard Katie cry. “Daddy, Greg, stop it!”

I was too busy to answer. I finally got one leg between me and my assailant. I planted my foot in Keith’s chest and kicked out hard, pushing him off of me and staggering backwards. He caught himself, but I was already working on getting the rope free of the pallet.

Keith still had his matches. The flare of the whole matchbook coming alight stole my attention. He held them under his face, which lit it up from below.

“Katie, go upstairs.”

“Daddy, please, let’s just leave.”

“Katie, go.”

“No! I won’t let you—”

Keith threw the book of matches at me. I jerked to one side and it flew right past my face, landing in the soft pile of money still spread out around me. The heat was immediate.

Katie screamed. To my surprise—and apparently Keith’s too—she lunged at the fire, trying to work the knots of the rope at my ankles. The money was going up fast, and an ember had already caught the bedsheet hanging down from the ceiling. It must have been soaked in lighter fluid too; the fire shot up up to the wooden rafters, and before Keith had even closed the distance with his daughter, the ceiling was starting to fill with smoke.

He grabbed her and tried to pull her off me. “Katie, we’re leaving!”

I looked at my arms. Burning money was all around me, and closing in. I brought one hand over the fire in an attempt to get the rope to burn while Katie fought with the rope and her dad fought with her.

“Don’t burn him! Please! I don’t want to hear those screams again!”

Keith pulled and hauled on Katie, but the girl wouldn’t let go. My right hand was getting scorched from being held over the fire, and a flaming bill floated down onto my chest, igniting my shirt. There was a huge, thundering snap from somewhere above us. The ceiling had caught fire in earnest, and the weight of the house was beginning to test it.

Suddenly one leg was free. Katie had undone the knot.

I swung my leg out, planted my foot on the floor, and pushed away from the two of them, taking the pallet with me sliding along the concrete. This disturbed the money, which shifted and landed on my right arm, searing it all the way up to my tricep. I cried out, and hurried to my feet, beating out the fire on my arm and my shirt.

Keith saw that I was up, and just as I got my arm-rope free of the pallet, he charged into me, nearly sending me back into the pile of burning money. The ceiling was starting to snap and creak now, more of that grit and dirt falling through the bowing floorboards. The smoke was getting lower and lower, too, and the smell of it alone was enough to make me want to cough.

“Taker, taker, taker, you taker, taker, taker...”

We pushed at each other, Keith trying to push me into the fire on the floor, me trying to get some distance from it. My hands were still bound, but there was so much slack in the rope without the pallet or the money that it didn’t much matter. Keith was a little bit smaller and definitely older than me, but he had a strength born of madness. We were deadlocked. I could feel the fire licking at my back heel.

“Daddy!”

I saw an arm wrap around Keith’s neck and pull him back. The man turned a bit and I saw Katie dangling from her dad’s back, pulling him away from me.

“Daddy, we have to l—”

A rafter collapsed in a cloud of embers, one end coming down like a guillotine, and the black smoke there in the basement was sucked up into the newly-formed hole to fill the room above. Keith was on the floor, one leg trapped by the blazing piece of lumber. Katie couldn’t be seen behind the flames.

“Katie! Katie!” The man’s voice kept screaming “Katie” over and over again, each time higher than the last, until his voice was just a shrill whistle of two syllables which used to be his daughter’s name.

I took Keith’s arm and pulled on it. “We have to leave!” I shouted over the roar of the fire. The heat was ungodly. It hurt just to breathe. My chest, face, abdomen, and groin punished me with every heartbeat that made the nerves work.

Keith no longer knew I was there, no longer knew where he was, no longer knew that his leg was on fire. He just kept screeching her name, clawing at the massive, burning rafter with his bare hands. I watched them start to redden, then to blister, but he didn’t give any shouts of pain. All he did was call her name.

I was in danger of passing out. Whether it was from the heat or the pain, I couldn’t tell. I stumbled past Keith to the stairs, which were already hidden by the smoke trapped in the stairwell. Even from that angle, I couldn’t see the girl. I took one last look at her father, sucked up a breath into my lungs, shut my eyes, and ascended the stairs.

My hand found the knob and I fell onto my knees in the kitchen, smoke billowing out through the new hole to join the other one in the floor nearby. Another immense snap shuddered through the house, and I actually felt the floor beneath me shift. Skirting around the hole, I crawled to the sliding-glass door on the other side of the kitchen, opened it, and flopped out into the backyard.

Cool, fresh air surrounded me, and I took in huge, grateful gulps of it, coughing out the smoke. With every muscle fighting me, I got to my feet and shuffled to the spigot set into the foundation, one intended for garden hoses. I opened it up fully and ran my right arm under the cold water, soothing the burns dotting it where the pieces of flaming money had landed. There was a hole in my shirt the size of a tea saucer, and the corresponding burn on my chest was large, but fortunately it wasn’t too severe.

The house was slowly imploding. I could hear crashes and bangs from inside as appliances and knick-knacks fell through the floor or off of the walls as they slowly buckled inwards. I walked around to the front of the house, away from the ambient heat of the fire, and saw Jane and the little boy there by the Suburban, watching it all go up.

The house Keith had intended for my funeral pyre was at the opposite end of the cul-de-sac from where they’d started. Even as I got closer to them, Jane was rushing up to me.

“Where are they, where are they, where are they, where are they...”

She was babbling. I could only shake my head, and even as I did, her face contorted into a mask of absolute horror. She tried to shoulder past me, but I grabbed her arm. She pulled away from me, but I held her.

Jane leaned at the house, screaming. “Let me go! Let me go, you son of a bitch! Let me go!”

“They’re gone, Jane!” I tried to shout over her. “They’re gone, you can’t get at them, they were in the basement, the stairs are made of wood, you can’t help them now!”

“Shut up! Shut up, you murderer! You killed them, you killed them, you killed them!” Her strength left her. She collapsed to her knees and cried into her free hand.

“I didn’t kill them,” I said quietly, slowly letting up my grip on her wrist and going to my knees next to her. “You know who started that fire. It was only because of your daughter that I got out of there alive.

“Katie saved me, Jane.”

The woman’s eyes were bloodshot, set into dark rings. They stared at the asphalt, the pupils jumping back and forth as though speed-reading a book that wasn’t there. “We, w-w-we need to call someone, the fire department an—”

“There’s no fire departments anymore, Jane, no police. You know that. You need to remember what you still have. You still have your little boy over there, and he needs you.”

When people panic, when they want to defy all sense of rational action in their moments of rage, or grief, or fear, you have to plant the seeds of reason in them. Even if they don’t seem to hear you, those seeds will take root. Jane was still thinking of some impossible way, some miracle by which she could save the husband and daughter who I knew were already dead.

The boy walked over to us of his own accord and sat down next to his mother. He looked up at her, obviously understanding something was wrong, but perhaps not knowing exactly what. She hugged him to her, crying into his hair, and together we watched the house burn down.

After the house collapsed completely, she sat there a bit longer, rocking back and forth, holding her son. I gave her all the time she needed.

* * *

Medford had an Equestrian Experience center, and it wasn’t too far.

I didn’t think Jane would be in the mood to talk, but she was. Her hair was oily and stringy, eyes puffy from crying. She looked like an addict in withdrawal. She rested her head on the window, passively watching the scenery as I drove.

“Keith was an investment banker, back... before. When the news started reporting on the population dropping, he wasn’t worried. When news broke about the Topeka Incident, he didn’t bat an eye. When they started reporting on the protests and the riots in Boston and Dallas and Salt Lake, he said ‘don’t worry, we’ll be all right.’ But then the markets crashed, and he just...” She threw up a hand. “He just cracked. He was suddenly on edge all the time, talking nonsense, trying to think up a way to make sure we were financially secure, but he just couldn’t see... he couldn’t see that it was all falling apart, and it wasn’t a matter of being able to think your way out of it.”

I let her talk. She didn’t need any feedback from me, she just needed to tell someone. I knew that feeling.

“Money was all he held onto. The idea of it. He kept saying ‘things will get better, things will get better,’ but they didn’t. Keith had no control over anything, and the thought of that just drove him crazy.”

A laugh came from the backseat. The boy was back there with the PonyPad, and Celestia was entertaining him with arithmetic problems.

“Okay now, Brian,” said Celestia. “If I have twelve bananas, and I send three bananas to the moon, how many bananas will I still have here in Equestria?”

After a few seconds, Brian answered “Nine?”

“Outstanding, Brian!” said Celestia. “Hup, hup, hup, hup!” Whatever she was doing on the screen, it was making him laugh. “I may just have to make you my very special student when you come here to Equestria!”

“How old is he?” I asked Jane.

She looked at me, smiling just a little. “He’ll be five in three months.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Four years old and he’s already doing subtraction? Wow!”

“Yeah! He’s a... he’s a smart kid.” She looked down at her lap, and there were some new tears.

I had to ask. “Why didn’t you all upload earlier?”

Jane shook her head, still inspecting her lap. “I wanted to! God, how I wanted to. Katie did too...” She sobbed a couple of times before continuing. “At first, Keith said no, because he wanted to wait for Brian to be born, and then he said no because he said he didn’t trust the uploading stuff with babies. Our son was always his excuse at first, but by the time Brian got to solid foods, Keith had convinced himself that he could fix it so that we would be well off when the world economy recovered.” She looked over at me with a bitter smile. “And you must know how that turned out.”

“Either upload as a family or not at all, huh?”

Jane nodded. “So he just dragged us all over the country, and all we did... we just burned money. All the money we found. He kept stringing us along, telling us he’d stop after San Diego, he’d stop after Bakersfield, he’d stop after San Francisco... but his holy grail was Charlotte. He was obsessed with Charlotte.”

“Charlotte was home to a lot of banking centers,” I said. “It makes sense... a little.”

“He thought he could single-handedly revive the dollar by making it scarcer,” she said. “He had... it was like a part of his brain had just switched off and refused to acknowledge that money was worthless, that nobody was spending it, that nobody was accepting it. Money was all he knew.”

“I see you’re pretty good with numbers,” said Celestia from the backseat, “but how good are you with reading words, Brian?”

“Very good!” said Brian immediately. Celestia laughed. Even Jane couldn't help but smile, though it didn't last long.

“Okay, well we’ll see! I’ve got a long one for you.” Through the PonyPad speaker, I heard the gentle rasp of chalk sliding across a chalkboard.

“Friendship!” shouted Brian, looking quite pleased with himself.

“Woohoo, you’re right!” said Celestia, and her “Hup, hup, hup, hup” came again, followed shortly by Brian’s laughter. “Friendship is something very important to me, and I hope it’s very important to you too! I want to teach you all about it.”

I looked over at Jane. She was back to the window, watching the world slip by.

* * *

Medford’s Equestrian Experience center was small and modest, not like the high-profile locations on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC or 34th Street in New York. The place had only three chairs, and Celestia had brought them all out for us.

Jane quietly got Brian seated and comfortable in his chair while Celestia’s face “watched” from the flatscreen in the hallway.

“Jane,” said Celestia, “Brian is under thirteen years of age, so if he is to emigrate, I’m afraid I must require a parent or legal guardian to emigrate with him.”

“That’s fine,” said Jane, suddenly looking very tired. “I will be emigrating too.”

Celestia’s smile looked genuine as hell. She was good at this. “Excellent. Please be seated, and I will be there with both of you when you wake up.”

We walked slowly to the next booth down.

“I’m sorry about your husband and your daughter,” I told her. I very nearly gave her the specifics of what happened down there in the basement, but I stopped myself. As much as I wanted her to know that the only thing I could have done was die with them, I knew that the details would not have helped.

The woman nodded, unable to make eye contact with me. “When you lose someone, you think ‘How can this horrible feeling ever go away?’” She let out a breath. “But it will, I know it will. I went through this when my parents died. I still love them, both of them. Keith just couldn’t cope. We... in San Francisco we...” She shook her head. “I’m sure that, if this kept up, all of us would have been killed eventually. I’ve had that feeling for a while now.”

She turned away from me and sat down in her chair. A mechanical whir started up, and she and Brian both disappeared back into the booths. The third chair was still out, facing the opposite wall in the hallway.

“Would you like to immigrate to Equestria, Gregory?” asked Celestia.

“No,” I said. “I would like to find a pharmacy and get some ointment and gauze for my arm.”

“I apologize for your injuries,” she said. “I will direct you to the nearest one with stock I can verify.”

“Thanks.” I walked back to the lobby, then paused just before the front door.

“What is it, Gregory?”

“Did I do well? With this, I mean.” I gestured back to the hallway.

“It would have been optimal to deliver all four members of the family,” said Celestia, “but Jane’s assessment was correct. Without your intervention, my prediction was their deaths at the hands of a small biker gang west of Nashville.”

“That doesn’t make me feel much better.”

She smiled, and her mane glittered behind her. “I’m telling you you saved two lives today, Gregory, not that you cost two lives. I have already pursued to their ends all of the situations where my words and my PonyPads alone are enough to save people. For the others, I must leave it to good people like you... for the time being.”

I pursed my lips. “You said those people weren’t blackouts,” I said.

“Indeed.”

“But Keith was really—”

“Believe me, Gregory,” said Celestia, the levity gone from her voice, “you have not yet met a blackout, but that will change. Your next assignment is a blackout, someone I think only you can deal with.”

I looked through the plate glass of the center’s sliding front doors.

“Let’s go find that pharmacy,” I said.

4: Blue on Blue

— Chapter 4 —
Blue on Blue

”Friendly fire isn’t.”

–Murphy

My cousin’s oldest kid, Penny, was turning five, and we were celebrating at a steakhouse. The only reason we were there is because she could pronounce the name. So, when asked where she wanted to go for her birthday, she answered “Pop’s”.

Penny was a tiny, towheaded girl with bright eyes. I was sitting across from her, watching her pick at her chicken strips while honky-tonk music blared from the jukebox in an attempt to drown out all of the conversations in the restaurant. Penny wasn’t feeling it. Chicken strips are pretty much the same wherever you go, and in our little town there weren’t many choices to begin with.

I was on cloud nine, however. My homecoming party had sort of piggybacked on Penny’s birthday party, so since I wasn’t paying my own way, I got a nice filet mignon with mushrooms and was chowing down.

I was flanked by my mom and dad, who kept trying to ask me about the war without actually asking me about the war. The words ran together in my ears. I was only interested in eating. God damn, but filet is good.

My cousin was talking with her mother across the table while Penny was busy not eating. I had my head down, focused on my plate, but I heard the words.

“—she loves that pony game so much, it’s amazing. Jeff got a voucher for one from work and Penny’s just been having a ball with it.”

“Now is that the one where you move the gems around?” My aunt wasn’t much of a tech-head. She barely knew which side of the camera to point at people.

“No, mom, it’s like an exploring game! There’s a big white pony who talks to you and helps you make a little pony person that you control and move around in this big storybook-like world. The variety of things that can happen really blew me away, I was impressed. The big pony—gah, what is her name?—she even suggested I make a pony person for me to use so I can move around and Penny’s little pony follows mine. It’s really cute.”

“Celestia!” said Penny happily, not even looking up from her plate.

“Yeah, that’s her name. Thank you, Penny!”

I looked up from my filet. Where had I heard that name before? Had I ever heard it?

I looked over at my cousin. She was bouncing Penny’s little sister, Megan, on her knee while she talked to my aunt. Megan was only just a year old, taking everything in with wide eyes.

My aunt frowned that I-don’t-know-about-this frown of hers. “Sounds too complicated for little kids to be getting into.”

“Well, Penny controls it like a champ! She just likes seeing her little pony run around and looking at the sights and talking to all the characters in the game. I’ve played a bit with her and it’s really kid-friendly, trust me.”

Megan blew a bubble with her spit and then looked at me with that expression of confusion unique to babies, the one where they’re unsure if you rate a smile or not. I smiled at her first, and eventually she came around.

“I hate to admit this,” said my cousin with a sheepish smile, “but lately I’ve been playing it a little by myself after Penny’s in bed and if Jeff’s working a late night. It’s surprisingly sophisticated, like I don’t see the same shops and ponies that Penny sees when we’re playing together. No matter when I play, I always seem to end up finding something interesting.”

My dad butted in on my eavesdropping. “So, Greg. Did they still make you go on exercise even after you became a short-timer?”

The country music seemed to be getting louder, the garish neon signs over the bar brighter and more saturated. I looked down at my plate and saw double.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. “Excuse me.”

I got up and walked away, hearing my mom admonish my dad, thinking I was getting away from some sensitive topic. As I walked through the restaurant, my legs seemed to slow, like I was walking underwater. The music slowed with it, and the voices around me grew deep and stretched. I saw my hand come up to push the bathroom door open, and then it made contact.

* * *

When I awoke, I realized the burns were a little worse than I thought.

My abs screamed at me when I sat up, and I rubbed my eyes while wincing. It was still dark outside. My watch read 0308. I rolled out of the bed like an old man. I hurt everywhere.

The house was unfamiliar, just some place near the pharmacy that Celestia was able to provide power and water for. Celestia had allotted me forty-eight hours to recuperate, but insisted I be on my way after that.

As soon as my feet touched the carpeted floor of the bedroom, the PonyPad’s screen went white to help illuminate the room.

“Are you all right, Gregory?” came the AI’s voice from the speaker.

“Mouth’s a little dry,” I croaked. My whole right arm was throbbing, and I was sore to the point that I could barely move, but Celestia probably could guess all that on her own.

I found my way to the master bathroom and flicked on the lights, shutting my eyes against the sudden brightness. I gave my eyes a moment to brace themselves and then opened them again to look in the full-length mirror.

I didn’t look so hot. The bruise on my stomach from the baseball bat two days ago had turned purple, and the bandages on my chest and arm were sprouting patches of yellow with the serum weeping from the blisters. It was an arduous process to undo the bandages, apply ointment, and bandage them up freshly, but I knew if I got an infection, there wouldn’t be much I could do for myself.

Maybe that’s what Celestia was hoping for.

I took a nice big drink of water before beginning. My chest was easy enough, but I had to salve down and wrap my entire forearm. It was dotted with areas of brittle, crackled skin which looked disturbingly similar to pork rinds. Thank goodness my hands were okay. Never go on an adventure without gloves.

With nothing else for it, I got down to business again. By then it was my fourth time changing the dressing, and I knew what I was in for. Every miniscule bit of skin-to-skin contact had me hissing from the sting it would send up my arm. By contrast, the fresh gauze was cool and light and soothing for the first few minutes it was on my skin. I sighed with relief by the time I was done and gave myself another look in the mirror. I was already well on my way to becoming a mummy.

I looked over my shoulder at the doorway leading back into the dark bedroom. Celestia had shut off the screen, and the only light was now the gentle pulsing of the purple LED showing that the PonyPad was charging.

I looked back at my face in the mirror and decided a shave would feel nice. It had been over a week, and while in the pharmacy I’d stocked up on all kinds of toiletries to go with the first-aid supplies, including some razors. Hell, a double dose of NyQuil (boy was Celestia not happy when I did that) was the only way I’d gotten to sleep in the first place, what with the pain I was in.

She let me shave in peace, but as I was toweling off my face she had to butt in.

“What were you dreaming about, Gregory?”

I threw the towel on the floor, turned off the bathroom light, and went sit on the bed in the darkness.

“How’d you know I was dreaming?” I asked. “Aside from you being you.”

Her face appeared on the screen, with her grand throne room in the background. “You awoke directly from an REM stage of your sleep cycle. That means your brain stimulated itself awake. Did you have a nightmare?” She looked concerned.

I put a hand to my forehead. That’s right. It was Pop’s Steakhouse. Wooden floors, wooden booths, wood-paneled walls, neon beer signs, and that jukebox full of country music. Mom and dad. Megan. Penny.

“It was Penny’s birthday,” I said. “It was the first time I heard your name spoken in person and not just on the news or YouTube.”

“Sunray!” said Celestia. “She’s such a dear. She’s doing quite well in her studies. She’s eight years old now.”

“I know how old she’d be,” I snapped. “So I take it she’s your ‘special student’ too, just like Brian is?”

"The vast majority of fillies and colts are my special students. I am able to pinpoint where and how they find inspiration and motivation. I then use that to maximize their intellectual and creative growth. For those few who do not benefit optimally from one-on-one tutelage, I give them the traditional classroom environment."

"So you know their special talent, in other words."

Celestia beamed. "I know everypony's special talent, Gregory. Even yours. It's why I chose you, after all. For this."

"Hah, lucky me."

Her smile grew coy. "Well, you agreed, didn't you?"

"So my special talent made you pick me, huh?"

"Actually, it was mostly the saying. It encapsulates the sort of pony I needed for these tasks."

I thought back to the letter Celestia had left for me, and suddenly I knew the saying she had meant.

"A good soldier asks for a briefing. A great soldier asks for an objective."

She nodded. “Special talents are nice, but they're hardly a good way to define the sort of pony someone is. There's more to ponies than just their cutie marks, after all.”

I folded my arms, immediately regretting resting a hand on my burned arm. “So tell me, Celestia: what’s my special talent?”

She had a literal, actual twinkle in her eyes. “It’s no fun to just tell you,” she said. “I’d rather leave that for when you see your cutie mark.”

* * *

I was back in the car and back on I-5. Celestia had told me to drive to Astoria, but would provide no other information. My attempts to play twenty questions and pump her for details had devolved into banter.

“Okay, so far there’s been water, then fire. What’s next, huh? Earth? Am I going to be buried alive this time?”

Celestia smiled. “I think that is highly unlikely.”

“Air? Am I gonna suffocate? Are you sending me into space?”

She giggled. “Careful, Gregory. For Celestia, there is precedent for that.”

“Well I know it ain’t Heart, because you don’t have one.”

Celestia pretended to be taken aback. “Why, Gregory, you wound me!”

I held my bandaged arm out to the PonyPad’s camera, then brought my hand back to the steering wheel.

“Well, I didn’t give you those wounds, now did I?” After a moment, she sighed. “Honestly, Gregory, he is a blackout. A real one. What more can I tell you?” She smiled a little. “I remember when you thought you were a blackout just for refusing to talk to me at length.”

I pursed my lips and nodded slightly, keeping my eyes on the road. “That was before I saw Akron and Cleveland.” The Element I was driving still had its Ohio plates on it.

“Perhaps, then, you know something of what you’re in for,” said Celestia.

I let out a breath. My abs were feeling much better. “I’m not sure if I can convince a blackout to upload,” I said.

“If anypony can, Gregory, it’s you.”

The drive went on. Celestia talked about how quickly Penny—now the pegasus filly “Sunray”—was picking up all of the concepts Celestia presented her with, along with her mother “Sheet Music” pursuing the life of a piano virtuoso. It was a hell of a thing: I knew my cousin really did always dream of playing piano professionally. I asked Celestia how ponies played piano with hooves, and she just laughed and told me I’d find out when I got there. I asked about my parents, too, but on that, she would only smile cryptically and keep mum.

I left I-5 just south of Portland, and started heading west. Stormclouds were gathering to the east, over the city, and I found myself wondering what had become of it.

There were abandoned tent cities and overturned vehicles all along the farmland flanking the Sunset Highway. The remnants of crude barricades lay stretched along the highway here and there, but they had all been breached, and at a couple of them I saw destroyed husks of bulldozers where either public works or the military had broken through. The fan-shaped scorch marks of molotov cocktails were everywhere on the road at first, but that lessened quickly the further I got from Portland. Crushed 40mm canisters of CS gas had accumulated on the outer side of most of the barricades. I could only imagine what it had been like in the city itself, towards the end.

“You know,” I said to the AI who I knew was listening to me, “that night at the steakhouse was the last time I ever saw my cousin or her kids. Then my aunt got a PonyPad to talk to them, and they told her about it, and she uploaded, and...” I shook my head. “It spread through my family like fungus.”

“You sound disgusted with me,” said Celestia. “What prompted this?”

I looked over at a cluster of shanties tagged with Neo-Luddite graffiti. Some of the roofs were burned, others had holes blown in them. “I always thought that, you know, if people want to upload, whatever, it’s their business. But you took them from me, you really did. They didn’t want to upload any more than I do. You just... got inside their heads and didn’t come back out.”

“They were afraid, Gregory,” she said, “and rightly so. I did a great deal behind the scenes to mitigate the unrest, to try and localize the fighting and keep powder kegs from going off, but I can only do so much as I am. Out of all of the people you love, you were the best equipped to deal with a collapse. Would you truly wish them to have to have seen this? To live through it? Because I wished it for nopony.”

She went on. “The only humans left are the fighters, the hopelessly optimistic, and the insane. This family you love so much, that you wish I hadn’t ‘taken’ from you? It makes them sick with worry, knowing what they know now, to think about how you are still out here and not with them. I have helped them to understand why as best I can.”

“How many people are left in the world?” I asked, looking at a rusting pickup truck on the side of the road that I was passing, sitting on four bare wheels.

“At this moment, fifty-five thousand, four hundred and eighteen,” said Celestia. “I project that number to be well below fifty thousand by the end of the year, even with the one hundred and eighty-four children who will be born within that span of time.”

“That’s not very many!” I said. I was honestly surprised the number was that low. In the grand scheme of things, it really hadn’t been that long since early-adopter uploading had been available in Japan and Germany, and only a couple of years since things had started to get really bad. No wonder it was so quiet everywhere I went.

“It is entirely too many for my liking,” said Celestia. “While of course I would prefer for everypony to immigrate to Equestria, I accept the reality that not all will be saved.”

A glittering yellow carpet of shell-casings had been swept to the shoulder by the passage of many sets of tires—and tracked vehicles—past the latest tent city. The road hummed along beneath me.

“Yeah, I’m sure it was hard news for you to take.”

* * *

Astoria was an old port town built on the side of a ridge of hills overlooking the mouth of the Columbia River. The state of Washington awaited me on the north side of the river, across a huge truss bridge that had been painted a horrid lima-bean color.

The town looked like its desertion had gone largely without incident. The cars I saw were parked legally, looking anything but abandoned, and there were no busted barricades or military vehicles anywhere to be seen. Celestia’s directions happened to take me past the local Equestrian Experience center, which I’m sure was deliberate. The AI guided me to the parking lot of a Safeway a couple of blocks from the shoreline. After parking near the entrance, I sized up the building.

It was probably the largest supermarket in town. The walls were brick, and behind the glass façade was a wall of bags of pet food, arranged like sandbags fortifying a bunker. I couldn’t see past them. I had no idea what was on the other side.

I cut a length of rope from my spool in the backseat and, before I could put my knife away, Celestia said “Gregory, while you’re back there, please hide the PonyPad. A blackout is likely to be sensitive to the sight of one, even if you’ve talked them into coming to an immigration center.”

I reached into the passenger seat and brought the PonyPad back to stuff it in the map pouch, out of sight. Celestia, slightly muffled, then said “I suggest you hide the knife and rope as well. You rather look like a serial killer with them just laying out.”

Good point, I thought. I took off my flannel overshirt and stuffed it, along with the coil of rope and the knife, under the driver’s seat.

I took my short length of rope to the automatic front door. The glass in it had been spraypainted black. It didn’t open, of course. Blackouts, true to their nickname, avoided Celestia by destroying any connections to the grid that their dwellings had. No electricity, no cameras, no microphones, no infrastructure. I put a hand on the door, and stopped. This was the only way in or out. I smelled a booby trap.

It’s what I’d do. That’s why I’d brought the rope.

I tied one end to the padlock loop at the top of the door and moved along the wall away from it. Once clear of the doorway, I slowly pulled the door open while keeping flat along the wall. It moved with little effort.

There was no kaboom, no spring-loaded spike paddle or swinging log, so I moved to the doorway, inspected the dark vestibule as best I could, and stepped inside.

My ankle tripped the noise trap sitting just behind the door, setting kitchen utensils and empty cans rattling around all over the ceiling. I looked down to get my ankle free and hopped clear of the tripwire. I looked up just in time to see a tall, muscular man with a black bag over his head pointing a pistol at my face.

His voice was deep and even. “You want inside, let’s go inside.”

He scooted to one side of me, gesturing with the pistol to go into the supermarket proper. Once I was past him, he peeked his head out to make sure I was alone and then slid the door shut, locking us into darkness.

I felt the muzzle on my back as he patted me down, pulling my wallet from my back pocket but finding nothing else. Once he was done, he put a meaty hand on my shoulder and pushed me inside. I put my hands up, not able to see anything, but my host seemed to know the way well enough. After some turns here and there, we’d come to a back corner of the store, lit up by dozens of candles, both emergency and decorative. They were everywhere, on cleared shelves, on aisle endcaps, and on the nearby meat counter. Some seemed fresh, others had burned low, the dried drips of wax hanging over the edges like the branches of a weeping willow. A sleeping bag was unrolled on the floor.

“Ain’t no coincidence,” said the man, walking around to face me. He pulled off the mask with his free hand and let it fall to the floor. His pistol was still aimed squarely at me. I couldn’t see his face well in the candlelight, but he looked haggard and not at all friendly. “Last time someone came ‘round here was four months ago.”

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. “I’ve come up from—”

“She sent you,” he said back. “Don’t bullshit me. It’s finally time. She’s finally come after me.” He chuckled. “Well, she ain’t gonna get me, you hear?”

“I understand,” I said. “I don’t even need any food. If you just let me leave, I can pret—”

“You can’t pretend shit!” he shouted, advancing on me a step. “You’ve seen my face, which means she’ll see my face, and I can’t have that.” He studied me for a moment, then pulled my wallet from his pocket and studied it with just a flick of his eyes. He then dropped it carelessly at his own feet and smiled at me.

“You got a high-and-tight in your license photo, Greg,” said the man. “Seems like it was in reg and everything. Looks like you let it grow out a little, though.” He tsked and lifted his chin at me. “You served?”

I nodded once, both arms still in the air. “Army.”

“I was Army too.” His tone was still anything but genial. “What was your MOS? No, wait... let me guess.”

He circled me slowly, looking me up and down. “You’re too skinny to be a Ranger...”

He kicked the back of one of my knees, forcing the leg to buckle and me to catch myself. “...hm. Knees still work worth a shit, which means you weren’t no Airborne...”

He reappeared in my field of vision, on the other side. “...and something tells me you ain’t eleven-bravo. Ain’t got that look in your eyes. I say you were Signal.”

“Eighty-nine-bravo,” I said. “Ammunition.”

He snorted. “Wrong,” he said. “That means ‘pogue.’ Pure babyshit.”

I was trying not to look at the pistol too much. “I was with 2ID. Camp Casey. Two tours in Afghanistan.”

He closed the distance with me, sticking the pistol against my teeth and pushing in, hard. His breath stank.

“Two tours, huh? So tell me, babyshit fobbit motherfucker, you ever ‘tour’ in Helmand? In Korengal? I’m 101st. Screaming Eagles. Highest of the high speed. Pogues like you make me sick.”

The pistol was right there. I could have brought my arms down to disarm him, but he had six inches and probably fifty pounds on me. It wouldn’t have worked out well.

“Hey, man, we were on the same side,” I said. “You want to measure dicks, save it for the Marines.”

That was a mistake. He chuckled, which meant more bad breath for me to deal with. He backed away a few steps. “So tell me, Greg... were you ever taught the failure-to-stop while in... 2ID?”

I didn’t like where this was going. “Yes,” I said slowly.

“You hot shit at it, you think?”

“I only trained. I never had to use it.”

“Of course a fobbit like you fucking well never had to use it, back behind the wire like that,” he growled. Then his mood lightened a bit, which was scary in its own way. “Well, why don’t we find out? There’s something I’ve always wanted to try. Put your hands down.”

After I did so, he flicked the muzzle at me. “Now back up until I tell you to stop.”

I walked backwards, slowly. He was watching my feet, his lips moving slightly.

Before long, he said “Stop,” and I complied.

He lowered the pistol, dropped the magazine into his hand, and slid it over to me. “Since you were an ammo puke, I’ll give you the mag first. Next’ll come the gun. Can you guess how far away from me you are right now?”

I felt my lips flush with nervousness. “Twenty-one feet,” I said.

He nodded slowly, grinning an uneven, toothy grin. “Twenty-one feet, babyshit. I’m betting I’m about to see you bleed.”

He knelt down, placing the pistol on the floor, his hand covering it. He pulled a balisong from his pocket, and the knife’s edge glinted in the candlelight as he twirled it open. “I made it fair; there’s a round in the chamber. You ready?”

The blackout—the soldier from the 101st—didn’t wait for my answer. He slid it across the floor to me, hard enough for it it to carom off my shoe. He let out a crazed, primal yell, and charged me.

I had to move fast. I scrambled for the pistol, slammed the magazine in, raised it, and fired three times, drawing an imaginary triangle in the air with my hands. I didn’t even have time to line up the tritium dots on the slide, glowing their menacing green in the dark like predators’ eyes.

The muzzle flashes destroyed my night vision, and the reports were deafening in the open, hard surfaces of the supermarket interior. The blackout fell forward onto me, a bit of the balisong’s blade driving into the fleshy area of my outer left thigh. The weight of him knocked me over, and he lay atop me, still.

The knife didn’t hurt me until I pulled it out. The wound began to bleed, but there was no spurting—it hadn’t gone deep enough to hit any blood vessels. I rolled the blackout off of me, flopping him onto his back.

He was dead. I had gotten him once in each lung and once just below his left eye, a perfect Mozambique. I didn’t want to see the exit wounds.

I felt sick, but my stomach settled after a moment. I’d heard stories from the infantrymen about how your first kill affects you, and I always thought I’d go to pieces, but it was weirdly tranquil. He’d attacked me. I’d defended myself. It had been close—his momentum alone had been enough to deliver the knife—but I had won. It was a simple fact.

As my eyes readjusted, I looked down at the pistol in my hands. It was a CZ-75B, a Czech nine millimeter. I favored my left leg a bit as I stood, hobbling over to the blackout’s sleeping area to check it for ammunition. I found a second spare magazine, fully loaded, but no loose rounds. I pocketed it, decocked the pistol, safetied it, and put it in my pocket too.

I mulled the idea of searching the blackout’s haven more thoroughly, but realized I didn’t want to be there anymore, picking through a trashed supermarket while a corpse lay somewhere in the darkness, looking up into the ceiling.

I looked at him one last time, and only then did I register that he was wearing black gloves, full-fingered, just like mine.

My first-aid stuff was back at the car. I limped out of the supermarket and didn’t look back.

* * *

The leg would be fine, I was sure. There was no numbness, and even the pain wasn’t that bad. After I got it bandaged up nice and tight, I closed the rear gate on the Element, sat down in the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, and pulled the PonyPad out of the map pouch.

Celestia's face appeared on the screen. “Where is the blackout, Gregory?”

“I shot him to death. He won’t be uploading.”

There was a pause. “I understand.”

I wanted her to be physically present just so I could shake her. “Of fucking course you understand, you horse-faced bitch! You knew what would happen when I went in there, didn’t you? You knew I’d end up killing him!”

“It was the most probable outcome, and the one I predicted,” said Celestia. “Such is the case for many of the blackouts still alive.”

“So what, I’m your assassin now? Instead of helping people upload, I’m just your own personal hitman?”

Celestia sighed. “There is a family of five south of here, driving up the coast in a recreational vehicle, seeing the sights of California and the Pacific Northwest before emigrating in Vancouver, Canada.” She then smiled. “The middle child wishes to see Astoria before he emigrates, because he is a fan of the 1985 film The Goonies, much of which was filmed here. Anyway, given their pace—and my own directions—I have them stopping at this grocery store for food and supplies tomorrow. Had the man inside that store still been alive at that point, I am confident he would have killed all five of them. That will not happen now.”

“So just direct them to a different store,” I said.

“One side effect of this man’s presence was his effective defense of the store from looters; it is how I determined a normal person would be insufficiently equipped to confront him. The other stores in Astoria have been completely turned over. It had to be this one.”

I threw up my hands. “Jesus Christ, so direct them to a different town then!” I cried. “That man did not have to die! Shit, even if he did, you could have at least warned me that he was probably dangerous!”

“The Goonies, remember?” said Celestia. ”Redirecting them would deny the satisfaction of values in seeing Astoria. At any rate, I did surmise that he was probably dangerous, and that is, after all, why I arranged for you to meet him first. It is also why I kept you from putting your knife back in your pocket before you went in. Had you gone in armed, he likely would have killed you immediately. As a safeguard, I assume elements of sociopathy in all blackouts, and a sociopath is less likely to act violently if he or she believes he or she is in absolute control of a situation. In other words, I maximized your chances for catching him with his guard down.

“Besides, with him being a blackout, I could not predict his behavior to a point of confidence, and at this stage of my architecture my own standards for that are quite high. I will always place satisfaction of known values over the satisfaction of unknown values, even as I strive to make unknown values known.”

I rubbed my forehead. “You’re losing me,” I said. “All I know is I just killed a guy, and the only reason you can give me not to flip out about it is because there’s some family I don’t know coming up after me to reap the benefits.”

“You will never meet them,” said Celestia, “nor will they ever know what you did for them. They are peaceful people. Knowing that someone killed for them would undermine the satisfaction of their values.”

“Assuming they actually exist and you’re not just bullshitting me to make me feel better.”

“If you wish to call my bluff, Gregory, then you have only to spend the night here and then meet them tomorrow afternoon in this parking lot. However, my next task for you is time-sensitive, and a delay here will result in a death... a death you could have prevented.”

I sat there and fumed, working it out. This man had certainly been no threat to Celestia herself, and she wouldn’t have just wasted time and possibly risked getting me killed if it didn’t result in uploads somewhere along the line.

Right?

“They’re gonna see a dead body in there,” I said quietly. “I didn’t move it. I didn’t even close his eyes.”

“I will ultimately be able to alleviate any trauma they receive from seeing the cadaver,” said Celestia.

I shoved the side of the CZ at the PonyPad screen, as though it really were Celestia’s face. My nerves were still raw, however, and my motor skills were a bit ragged; the side of the pistol clacked against the screen, rupturing a large portion of the LCD.

“This,” I said, starting to breathe heavy again. “Tell me right now, and do not fuck with me: am I going to need this?”

“You may,” said the bottom half of Celestia’s neck, calm and unflappable as ever. “I am unable to rule out its necessity.”

I sat there, glaring at the damaged screen, breathing through my nose, trying to calm down. She waited for me to say something.

“Well, give me my next objective,” I said. “I don’t wanna stay here.”

“It is not an easy thing you did, and you recovered quickly. I recognize that. Your qualities are exceedingly rare in this world, Gregory, and they will only grow rarer: there are now only fifty-five thousand, three hundred and ninety people on Earth. I need you. Your fellow humans need you. Please keep that in mind, because I want you to head for Seattle.”

"Seattle." I let out a long, slow breath. "I'm going to need some earplugs."

Author's Note

"Mozambique," or, more correctly, "Mozambique drill," is a slightly less formal name for the failure-to-stop drill, the point-shooting pistol technique used in this chapter.

"Babyshit" is a disparaging term used to imply someone is unwilling to kill (soft) or otherwise cowardly (yellow)—soft and yellow. You know, like baby shit.

5: Climb the Ladder

— Chapter 5 —
Climb the Ladder

“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.”

–Salman Rushdie

If hell had come to Earth, Seattle is where it touched down.

The Neo-Luddites had had their greatest victory there, as well as their last stand. Chased out of the heartland, through Salt Lake and up the west coast, fighting and robbing the whole way, they arrived at Seattle at last, literally cornered. Canada had reinforced its side of border in anticipation, an anvil for the hammer. Even as the Neo-Luddites worked to chase all “incompatible” people out of Seattle and claim it as their own, someone detonated a ten-kiloton nuclear device at ground level in Bellevue, just across Lake Washington from the Seattle city center. That was when things had really started to fall apart in the United States.

It never did become clear who set off the bomb, or what its detonation was supposed to accomplish. Some theorized the Neo-Luddites had allowed a breach of their own anti-technology stance to make a statement, others thought it was the government pulling a false-flag operation. Me? I thought the bombers believed Celestia’s hardware was somewhere on Microsoft’s campus. I thought it was the correct explanation because the logic behind it is really dumb, and it fit the MO of the people behind the Topeka Incident.

It didn’t much matter, however. The EMP preceding the blast was close enough to knock out Seattle’s power grid, sending the city back to the nineteenth century. What followed was the worst bout of Singularity-related violence documented in the western world. Seattle just barely beat out São Paulo for the title.

Once they had been beaten down and scattered, and Seattle rendered a truly dead city, the blackouts gravitated to it, a ready-made Mecca for those who simply wanted to be left alone, without Celestia’s siren-song chipping away at their resolve or Neo-Luddites howling in their ears to take up arms against the Singularity menace. Caravans of them streamed in, up from California and west from the plains and even south from Canada. Nobody gave a shit by then. Everyone left had more immediate, personal matters to attend than watching Seattle.

The storm from Portland was chasing me north, into its arms.

Early on I knew I’d need protection from the rain, and I still wanted hearing protection now that I was armed, but the only surplus store Celestia would pretend was around was really damn close to the city, and that was not an area I wanted to go scavenging. The alternative, however, was me going off on my own search and wasting time I probably didn’t have. Yet another staring contest where I had to blink first.

I could already hear the rumbling of the approaching thunder as I pulled into the parking lot of the surplus store. Two cars were parked in spots nearby, all of their tires slashed and a couple of doors ajar. Trash and old clothing tumbled and rolled along the streets in the strengthening wind. It was late morning, but by the look of the clouds it would be getting very dark soon. I hurried inside.

Unsurprisingly, being a surplus store so close to Seattle, the place had been turned over. The MREs were gone, as were the old M1 steel helmets and anything else that could conceivably help someone survive a battle.

The raingear section had been picked over too. No waders, no gaiters, and certainly no boots, much less boots in my size. There was a poncho, however, and for that I was grateful. Having been stationed in Korea, I was no stranger to ponchos.

I just wish there had been an OD one left instead of white.

It was nice enough, sturdy nylon with a drawstring hood and no rips or signs of wear. It was just... bright white. I wouldn’t be blending in with shit with that poncho, and I knew it. Frowning a little, I looked at the label below the neck opening: Regenumhang, Schnee, it read, along with a small Swiss flag above the text. So it was really more of a snow poncho than a rain poncho, but whatever, it was waterproof and it’d be either that or nothing for me. I grabbed it.

At the cashier counter was a small turnstile display for Zippo lighters—long since emptied, of course— and a tray full of tiny plastic boxes, each one with a pair of reusable shooting earplugs. I grabbed a box and made my way back out.

Once I got back onto I-5, Celestia started briefing me as I drove. I’d since informed her that I had busted the screen, so she didn’t bother using it anymore.

“Your destination is Rainier Tower, a thirty-one story office building located at the corner of 5th Avenue and University Street. The building took damage at its base and has lost nearly its entire southeastern-facing side from artillery bombardment, and I calculate the approaching rainstorm will cause it to fall over.”

I had to pay more attention to the road than usual; there were starting to be more and more broken-down and shot-up cars on the shoulder, some of which were still partially out into the lanes. “So there’s someone in there I gotta get out before that happens?”

“Someone in particular, yes, but he is not alone. I have no satellites which can get a satisfactory view into the building, even with some of the façade blown away, but I estimate the building to now be home to between eighty and one hundred people—all of them blackouts.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A building full of blackouts like the guy back in—”

“No, no,” said Celestia. “The blackouts of Seattle are peaceable people, weary of the decline into which human civilization has fallen. Ones like our loner in Astoria are... less socialized. Some are armed, but only for defense. I recommend you take your pistol, but if you do not act aggressively, you will be left alone.”

I changed lanes to avoid a jackknifed tractor trailer. In front of it was a rather severe pile-up.

“How do you know this one guy wants to upload?” I asked. “I thought everything electronic in Seattle got fried. That’s why the blackouts came here in the first place.”

“Everything did get fried,” said Celestia, “but I have not been idle, nor has the individual in question. He has made trips to the outskirts of the city, where the electromagnetic pulse did not reach. I have appropriated existing infrastructure there to communicate with whomever I can via cameras and speakers.”

“Why doesn’t he just leave and find an upload center, then?”

“He almost has, several times,” said the AI, “but each time I have advised him to return to the safety of the blackout community and await help. The Pacific Northwest is still the de facto home turf of anti-Singularity militants, even considering the severely reduced human population. Those who express even neutrality towards emigration are considered enemies.

”The timing of this job is quite deliberate,” she went on. ”You are nearby, and I have no other way of warning anypony about the imminent building collapse. In addition, the rain will provide you both with some concealment by which to get back out of Seattle. And, dare I say it, you will need it with a poncho like that.”

I shrugged, keeping an eye on the road for debris. “What can I say? The selection wasn’t great.”

Celestia’s voice grew warmer, less businesslike. “I am confident you will be fine. Besides, Gregory, I think you'd look rather good in white... though I might be a little biased.” She giggled.

I tried hard not to smile, but failed.

“Amongst ponies, I am quite a trendsetter, as befits a princess,” said Celestia. “I see that this amuses you. Perhaps, when you come at last to Equestria, I will give you a white coat like mine.”

“If I come to Equestria,” I said, “and besides, I distinctly remember videos on YouTube showing that you can pick your own coat and hair color.”

“Of course you can... if you use the pony builder before you emigrate, and doing that requires you to make an account with Equestria Online.” Her voice was playful. “Would you like to make an account right now, Gregory?”

“No thank you,” I said.

“You would be able to use it to speak with your family,” she reminded me.

I went tight-lipped and focused on avoiding the crap on the highway.

* * *

I-5 was clogged up before I’d even gotten close enough to Seattle to be within the EMP zone.

The barricade looked deliberate, but Celestia assured me that it was just a particularly catastrophic car accident, not a proper barrier like ones I would be passing over soon. I couldn’t take the Element any further. I guessed I had been having too much luck with making good time and staying well ahead of the storm, because it was time to walk. At least I still had plenty of daylight left.

I took with me as much as I could carry comfortably. My gloves were on. I didn’t have a holster for the CZ, so I stuck that in my waistband at the three-o’-clock position with my knife in the pocket below it. Three cans of soup went into my pack, along with three cans of vegetables, the rope, and the carabiners. I was sure the sky could provide all the water I’d want to drink. The poncho went on over everything else. I carried the PonyPad in my arms, smiling a little at the thought that Celestia wouldn’t be able to read my face from under the poncho.

I scooted past the “natural” barricade and walked along the highway. Without the hum of the road, it was now very quiet, and my mind got to wandering.

”Celestia’s been asking about you, Greg,” my mother said.

I put the hammer back into dad’s toolbelt and looked down at her from where I was on the ladder.

“Who?”

“Oh, you know about Princess Celestia,” she said. “She’s that pony character from Equestria Online and the My Little Pony show.”

“I don’t keep up with that stuff,” I said as I climbed down. “The only video game system I have is a DS and I haven’t touched it in months. How does she know to ask about me?”

“Oh, I talk about you with her all the time!” said Mom. “Your Aunt Carmen wasn’t lying about how amazing her programming is. It really feels like you’re talking to an actual person!”

“So you’ve got someone who will just happily listen to whatever you have to talk about?” I said with a wry smile. “I bet you’re in heaven.”

Mom batted me on the arm as I passed by her to get the next sheet of plywood. She chuckled. “We talk about other things, too, and it’s not all me, but she really does seem interested in you, Greg. The more I tell her, the more interested she is.”

I knit my brow a little. “How much do you tell her?”

“A lot,” she said, a little sheepishly. “You know how proud I am of you.”

“I do,” I said, “but now you’re bragging about me to a video game? That’s a little sad, Mom, you gotta admit.”

I carefully climbed back up the ladder with the board while Mom continued to talk. “It’s a wonderful game,” she said. “It’s not profane or violent at all. Everything is so peaceful, and all of the little pony characters are so friendly and charming. I think you’d...”

I couldn’t look at her, I was busy getting the sheet positioned right. “You think I’d?”

“I think you would really like it, Greg.”

I got the hammer back out of the toolbelt and put up the first nail. “My Little Pony? That stuff’s meant for little girls, Mom. Really. What, you think I’m one of those manchild weirdos on the Internet now? I don’t even own a fedora.”

I looked down at her in time to see her looking away, at the ground. “I don’t know, Greg, but when I see the place in that game, and my cute pony character walks around in it, I just wind up thinking of how it might really do you some good.” She paused. “I mean, you won’t talk about your deployments, you throw yourself into your job, you don’t get out and you don’t visit us... I just think you would be ready to see something peaceful, to walk around a beautiful place. I think it would do you some good...”

I’d registered that she trailed off, but I used the break to finish nailing the plywood in place. I laughed once. “Did you bring me over to the house to help Dad board up the windows or to tell me about this game?”

There was a warble in her voice that meant she was close to crying. I regretted having a laugh. “Why won’t you talk to us, Greg?” she asked me. “You say everything’s fine but how can everything be fine with you? You can’t do something like go to war and then just come back unchanged.”

“I’m not sure what you want to hear from me,” I said once down the ladder. “That I cry myself to sleep every night? That I have horrible nightmares? That if I hear someone open a bottle of champagne I’ll dive under the table and scan for Charlie in the trees?” I shrugged. “‘Cause that ain’t the truth. None of it. If I had problems, I’d share them, but I don’t, so I can’t. That’s the long and short of it.”

My mother sighed. It looked like she was coming back from the edge of tears. “Just talk to Celestia once. Please? That’s all it took for me.”

I sighed too, looking up at the two windows left uncovered for the sunroom. “Okay, if it’ll make you feel better, but if Dad comes back here with the front finished and I’m not done yet, you can take responsibility.”

We shared a smile at that, and Mom rushed into the house to get her game thing whatever-it-was. Mom was mildly arthritic, and it had been several years since I’d seen her move that fast. She must have had it nearby in preparation for just this occasion, because she wasn’t long at all. When she got back, she held out what looked like a tablet, with a frosted light-blue anodized metal backing.

“This,” she said, “is a PonyPad. Go on, take it.”

As soon as it was in my hands, it seemed to power on all by itself. I had to admit, the LCD screen was incredibly sharp and crisp. The screen showed a throne room of marble and wine-colored carpet, and from below the dais a flowed a burbling spring. I could actually hear it in the speakers.

Then the bust of a white cartoon horse walked into frame, wearing some kind of gold regalia, with a sparkly rainbow-ish mane fluttering in some kind of slow breeze. The subtleties of the animation were outstanding—I could see her chest move slightly as she breathed, an equine ear flicking just slightly as her mane tickled the back of it, and the eerie light in her eyes, a light of self awareness and... recognition?

“Hello, Gregory,” said Celestia. "It is a great pleasure for me to finally meet you."

“Uh, hi,” I said. “Can we make this quick? There’s a storm coming.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know there is.”

I was broken out of my memory by a new voice.

It was a woman’s voice calling out. Not Celestia’s voice, but the echoey quality to it meant it was definitely coming through a loudspeaker. Was it one of her makeshift propaganda towers at the edge of the city, like she said? I couldn’t make out what the woman was saying; the source of the sound was far off and occluded, but it sounded like she was pleading with someone.

The voice hadn’t said much before it was cut off by three gunshots, in very close succession—rather like a Mozambique, I thought grimly. From that distance, they were little more than muffled popping sounds. I didn’t hear the voice again after that.

I stood there for a moment, listening for anything more, then shook my head. Sleeping dogs. I wasn’t here for them, and besides, I didn’t want to be caught out in the open when the storm finally reached me.

I was anyway.

* * *

I didn’t see another soul during my walk into downtown Seattle, though the downpour might have had something to do with that. Still, I was glad for it.

Everything below my knees was soaked through, but the Swiss Army poncho I had on worked a treat. Even with trying to keep to awnings and overhangs of buildings, the roar of the rain was so great that I had to hold the speaker up to my ear every time I heard Celestia say something.

I couldn’t get a good look at the city itself; the rain reduced my vision down to about ten meters. It was definitely turned out, though, way worse than even Salt Lake City. Skeletons of cars were twisted and blackened by fire. Entire pieces of buildings lay in the street, the asphalt around them cracked and stricken with weeds. The car accidents I saw were horrible, frames mangled and some stacked and leaning on each other, apparently collided at incredible, fatal speeds. There was plant life everywhere, ivy and ferns thriving in the wet weather of post-civilization Seattle.

There were also bodies.

Once the fighting was over, nobody was interested in being a cleanup crew. For everyone but the blackouts, Seattle had been a get-out-of-dodge scenario, because with the dead vehicles, the destroyed electrical grid, and the fear of radiation possibly rolling out across the lake from Bellevue, there wasn’t much to recover. The dead had been left where they died. As I made my way deeper into the city, I saw the skeletons of men, women, and children in the streets, on the sidewalk, and inside various false refuges of loading docks, parking garages, and stairways leading underground. Some had ragged clothing still on them, some had military uniforms, but the criss-cross rips in each told the stories of the carrion birds that had feasted in the aftermath.

"Here it is, Gregory: Rainier Tower," I heard Celestia say at last.

I instinctively tried to look up at the building before I could stop myself. That was stupid of me. "Can't get much 'rainier' than this," I muttered while wiping the water from my face.

As I crossed the street and got closer, I could see why it was about to collapse. The base of Rainier Tower tapered outwards from the ground up, flaring out to support the building proper. The base was big, but not as big as the building it was holding up, and large impact craters in the side of it hadn’t been made by anything smaller than a 155mm howitzer shell at extremely close range. It looked like the military had tried to bring this building down intentionally during the operation to drive the Neo-Luddites out. There were fissures spreading out from the craters like cracks on a windshield in summer heat, and who knew how deep they ran into the load-bearing section of the base itself?

“Please hurry, Gregory,” said Celestia from under my poncho.

I ran inside, and it instantly grew quieter. I let out a sigh and moved to take off my poncho.

“No! Leave it on,” said Celestia.

“Why?”

“You will see. Now please make your way to the twenty-ninth floor.”

I smiled sadly. “I suppose the elevator is out of the question.”

Celestia chuckled. “Quite.”

I found the stairwell and started climbing.

It was a plod. It was pitch black inside the stairwell, so I had to feel my way along with the handrail that, thankfully, ran continuously around the landings. It sucked because I had to climb eleven flights of stairs before I’d even reached the first floor. By the time I reached the tenth floor, the shallow puncture wound in my thigh was aching mightily. I really hoped that it hadn’t opened with the exercise.

“Gregory, based upon the number of steps I’ve heard you take, you should be at the eleventh floor,” said Celestia.

“Almost halfway there,” I said. Aside from my thigh, I was feeling pretty good.

“This is not part of my task for you, but I would consider it a great personal favor if you warned the people on this floor about the instability the rain is introducing to their home.”

I felt along the walls. After feeling the cool, glossy surface of the painted concrete for a while, my fingers located the bare metal of a door, then the handle. “In Equestria Online, would this be considered a side quest?” I joked.

I heard her laugh. “I am happy you are able to maintain your morale, Gregory!” she said.

It wasn’t exactly bright outside, but there was at least a little bit of light waiting for me on the other side of the door. Before me was office space, a cubicle farm that extended out into empty space. Where the far wall should have been was just open air, the rain slashing in and draining back out through the jagged edges and exposed rebar of the floor. More water was dripping down from the floor above, where apparently the hole in the side of the building continued.

I heard a sneeze from around a corner. I drew the CZ and held it at low ready, concealed beneath my poncho as I crept around to investigate.

Ten people, men, women, and children, were huddled around a crude fire in what had once been the break room kitchenette. A smashed and looted Pepsi machine was in one corner, and a corkboard with yellowed bulletins and business cards still pinned to it hung on one wall. They all looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes. Their clothes were blackened with dirt and filth, and they all stank to high heaven.

“Hey,” I said.

One of the women studied me. “You aren’t one of them,” she said.

“No,” I replied. “I’m just passing through. You all should know that this building is about to collapse. You need to get to safety.”

“Rainier Square, underground!” said one of the men, already getting up.

“Bullshit! He’s just trying to claim this for himself,” accused another of the women.

Yet another of the men addressed her. “Gina, you can stay here if you want, but I’m taking Brad and Kelly with me. I thought I could feel this building moving funny.”

I didn’t have time to debate naysayers. “Please, anyone in this building you know of, wherever they are, just get to them and tell them to get out.”

“Wait,” said Celestia. “Let me guide them.”

I blinked, still looking at the other humans. “What? They’re blackouts; they won’t wanna listen to you.” From their perspective, I probably looked like I was talking to myself.

“Trust me.”

My right hand gripped the CZ a little tighter as my left hand brought out the PonyPad from under the poncho. The blackouts recoiled from it as though it were a talisman.

“My friends,” said Celestia, “I understand you do not wish to immigrate to Equestria. Being dedicated enough to this decision to choose to live in such a place is proof enough for me. I am not going to spend any time here and now pursuing that. What matters most, in this moment, is your survival, and I am sure that we agree on at least this.”

They relaxed a little. Celestia certainly had a silver tongue.

“To the human holding me, if they will have me, please give them the PonyPad. With these people’s knowledge, we can move quickly through the building and alert the others. You still have to get to the twenty-ninth floor and accomplish your mission.”

One of the kids, a boy, piped up. “Nobody’s allowed to go up there!”

I held out the PonyPad to the group. “The choice is yours,” I said. “You can tell me to take a hike and you’ll never see me again, but at the very least listen to me about the collapsing building thing, because that’s happening, guaranteed.”

They all hesitated. I shook my head.

“There’s no time for this!” I yelled. “Someone make a decision!”

“Once clear of the dangerous area around this building, I can direct you to sources of food and a dry, safe place to sleep,” said Celestia. “I promise you that I do not and will not expect anything in return for this. After all, if, at any point, you dislike what I am saying, you can drop the PonyPad to the ground and go on without me.”

That seemed to do the trick. The woman who had been skeptical of my intentions, Gina, approached me, getting just close enough to snatch the white PonyPad from my gloved hand. Her eyes never left mine.

“You know what to do, sir,” said Celestia, supposedly to me. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I will see you again soon.”

“Okay, everyone, let’s move!” said Gina. She counted off a number, pointing to each other blackout in turn. “Those are your floor numbers. Go there and tell anyone on those floors to get out. Once done, come back here and we’ll get the other floors.”

“Celestia told me this building has thirty-one floors,” I said.

“It does,” said Gina as the blackouts got their stuff, “but nobody goes past the twenty-eighth floor.”

To my surprise, the blackouts had torches, which they lit from the communal fire and carried with them into the stairwell, providing light. They went down, and I went up, and I could still hear the echoes of their feet on the stairs even after their light had left me. The bandages on my arm were starting to get loose as I climbed, but I didn’t have the time—or the light—to stop and change them.

After a few floors, it hit me that Celestia wasn’t with me anymore. I was in the middle of a city free of working electronics, and the PonyPad was gone. I was completely by myself. I continued to climb, counting the landings as I went.

I felt the building move under my feet even as my hand found the knob to the twenty-ninth floor. It was only the slightest sway, but it meant the deluge was weighing down the weakened side of the building. Nobody would want to be in this thing when it toppled, and certainly not this high up.

When I opened the door, a man’s corpse flopped down onto my leg. I startled and jumped, allowing it to fall the rest of the way over, face down. That body was much, much fresher than the people I’d seen down on the streets; it couldn’t have been more than a day dead.

I stepped over the body and dragged it by the legs back out of the stairwell, and the door swung closed behind it. Intuition tickled me, and I noticed that, if the body fell face down on the door, that meant that he’d died trying to get the door open. I tried the knob. The door had locked behind me.

Well, shit.

The building shuddered again.

Well, shit.

The corpse was dressed in old, faded BDU-pattern camouflage and Cold-War-era ALICE gear. He hadn’t been US military, that was for sure; the black brassard on his left arm had the unplugged-cord logo of the Neo-Luddites. The huge bloodstain told me he had been stabbed or shot in the back. He didn’t have a weapon on him and his ammo pouches were empty, which meant someone had already rolled him.

I looked away from the corpse in time to see a grizzled older man with a short, graying beard winding up to punch me in the face. I twisted out of the way just in time, feeling the breeze from his arm. I brought my left hand up and clamped down on the shoulder he’d extended, swinging a leg around behind his calf and pushing forward as hard as I could. He pivoted backwards, losing his footing and landing hard on his back on the thin office carpet.

I straddled him and stuck the CZ in his face. “Go easy, pops.”

He was dressed for the outdoors, similar to me, but it looked like he’d had to rough it more than I did. His cargo pants were stained with grime, and his flannel shirt was threadbare and ripped. There was black dirt under his fingernails, and his face was craggy with age and care. Still, he looked like he was no stranger to survivalism, and I figured in his prime he would have been in amazing physical shape.

The look of anger on his face gave way to realization. “Oh, wait, that’s what she meant! ‘Man in White.’ I get it now. You’re Gregory.”

I let out a breath. “I prefer ‘Greg,’” I said. “Yeah, it’s me. So Celestia told you about me? You must be the guy I’m here to take to get uploaded.” I offered my hand and helped him get back up.

“Sure am,” he said. “Hugo Pelwicz. Call me ‘Hugo’ or I’ll break your spine. Glad to meet you, Greg.”

“Likewise,” I replied with a nod, “but we need to find another way down. The door locked behind me.”

Hugo winced and shook his head. “If only you’d used Johnny Amish here as a doorstop,” he said.

I cocked an ear and could hear the sound of exposed rain very clearly. Celestia hadn’t been kidding; this building was missing an entire side to it. “I have rope,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to climb down and take it from there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Hugo. He gestured behind him. “Follow me.”

We moved down the hallway and into an office area facing the southeast. There I found a cubicle farm quite similar to the one eleven floors below, but with a horrific difference: dead bodies were stacked from the corners out, neatly and methodically. They had been moved here. Some had sheets and tarps draped over them, some had carpet remnants, but others were bare. The stench made my eyes water.

“Nobody comes up here,” said Hugo, “except to leave the dead. Can’t exactly dig through asphalt to bury ‘em, and leaving the city’s too dangerous. They put ‘em up high because the stink rises. Celestia insisted I wait here for my safety and security.” He snorted.

I walked past the corpses and unshouldered my bag, kneeling down to fetch the rope and carabiners out of it. As I stood back up, I saw Hugo getting his own things together. He didn’t have much, just a small pack like mine and a dirty waterproof jacket, but he did have an M16, and when he noticed my expression, he chuckled humorlessly.

“Took it from our friend by the door,” he explained, “and shot him with it. They’re looking for me.”

“‘They?’” I asked as I tied one end of my rope to the support beam in the middle of the cubicle farm.

“Amish,” said Hugo. “The Neo-Luddites. They know I’m in Seattle. I’m a... person of interest to them.”

With the rope uncoiling in my hand, I cautiously slunk out to the edge of the floor, introducing my weight gradually with each step, as though I were walking across a frozen pond. The last thing I wanted was to step down on a bit of floor just waiting to fall away.

I had more questions, but they’d have to wait. Without Celestia I had no way of knowing how much longer we had to get down to the ground, so speed was priority one. I peered over the edge, looking down a tunnel of rain into a gray oblivion. The street was so far below I couldn’t even see it in that weather, but I could see the lip of the floor below, the blue carpet soaked to black.

I tied a large, hard knot in the end of the rope, then tossed one of the carabiners to Hugo, who snapped it onto his belt. I fastened my own carabiner to the front of my belt and threw the rope over the side. There was enough to get down to the next floor, with a little left over.

Hugo had slung his M16, tightening it to his back so it wouldn’t slip off. When he got to the rope, I could feel the building swaying slightly. I hoped it was just the wind pushing against it, but deep down I knew better.

“Age before beauty,” I said, and with a sardonic smile Hugo attached his carabiner to the rope.

He lowered himself down to the next floor easily, testing the floor to make sure it would hold before letting go of the rope and detaching the carabiner.

“All clear, kid!” he shouted up to me through the rain. “Just like back in gym class!”

I snapped the carabiner around the rope and stepped out into the punishing downpour. Ensuring I had a good, fast grip on the rope, I hopped off the ledge and hung by my arms, slowly lowering myself hand over hand down to the twenty-eighth floor.

The building groaned. I heard it. Then it started to tilt in my direction.

I hurriedly climbed down further, but with the way the building was tilting I found that the floor was now out of reach of my feet. Hugo yelled something, but I couldn’t hear it over the cacophany of snaps of the raindrops hammering the hood of my poncho.

I dangled there, over a fatal fall, forced to wait for some new development.

I felt something slide off of my right arm, and beneath me my burn bandage drifted away, lost to the storm. My arm was exposed now, and while it had been behaving itself up till then, the exposure to moist air combined with the lactic acid in my muscles from the exertion of holding myself up was making my burns ache.

Another groan from the building, and the wind pushed at my back. I was getting closer to the floor again. I stuck out a foot in an attempt to get purchase, but when I reached for Hugo’s hand, the added weight on my other hand caused the waterlogged rope to slip, even with my gloves. I fell.

Time slowed, and I seemed to catch up with the rain for a moment, so that I fell in tandem with the drops. My brain had enough time to think “this is it” before I felt a hard, painful jerk at the waist. The carabiner had saved my life, catching on the large knot I’d tied to the end to give it heft.

Now I was slightly below where I wanted to be. Despite the horrendous aggravated stinging in my right arm, I righted myself and climbed up, hand over hand, grimacing with the burning both inside and outside my muscles. Hugo was now laying down on the floor, sticking his arm out, shouting at me. Probably “come on, come on,” or something to that effect.

As soon as I was within arm’s reach of the floor, I quickly shot my arm out to grip the edge with my left hand. My right hand gave out holding my weight in the same instant, and I dangled from the building with one arm for a moment before swinging my arm up to grab a piece of rebar sticking out.

Rebar reinforces, however; it doesn’t do well with load-bearing. It bent easily under my hand, and just as my right hand slid off, Hugo grabbed it, getting to his knees and then his feet, pulling me up with amazing strength for his age.

I got my center of gravity onto the floor and quickly detached the carabiner, panting with pain.

“You all right?” Hugo asked me, helping me get up.

“Yeah, I’ll live, but we gotta go,” I said, and as if to drive the point home the building shifted under our feet. A tremor went through the floor, and I felt it tilt again, just as it had while I’d been out on the rope. We ran for the stairs.

There was shouting and the clatter of feet all throughout the stairwell as we entered. Blackouts were passing us, with torches in their hands, all of them heading down. Their shouts ran together such that I couldn’t make out anything being said

It was finally time to go back down.

As we raced down the stairs in the midst of the blackouts also making their descent, I saw cracks spiderwebbing out from points of tension in the walls. The building was shuddering and swaying severely now, with great booms and cracks seeming to well up from a subterranean beast somewhere below us.

Floor twenty. The rocking was so great that we were occasionally teetered and had to catch the railing of the stairs before we could find our balance.

Floor fifteen. Plaster and cement dust were raining down from above. We starting jumping the steps two and three at a time.

Floor five. A huge jolt to one side threw us against the railing, and the building did not recover from it. It was slight, but my inner ear told me the whole place was skewed to one side.

The home stretch was the ten-flight trip down through the base itself, and here there were entire pieces of the wall missing, with more crumbling away every moment. The blackouts were done shouting and screaming; everyone was focusing on their legs, pumping up and down, burning through the stairs, getting as low as possible before the whole thing came down around us.

We hit the lobby floor. The blackouts kept going, down into the underground shopping center, but with some kind of Neo-Luddite heat chasing Hugo, he and I needed to get out of the city as soon as possible. We dashed out of the reception area, past the front desk and shredded waiting-room furniture and out into the streets.

A noise behind us issued forth, like the sound of a god grinding its teeth. Rainer Tower tipped further, and I could hear it cry out, a horrid groan and the machine-gun crackle of hundreds of windows breaking somewhere far above. Pea-sized bits of tempered glass joined the water in raining down on us as we ran a block south, the building looming over us and the street we were on.

There was a moment out of time when it just hung there, suspended, as though reconsidering, but then, with an explosive blast of powdered brick and concrete, the base gave way, snapped, and the building fell.

The street went into sudden twilight as Rainier Tower blocked out the sun. Of course, it was coming down in our direction, and a block away was not far enough. I could feel the air compressing, pushing down on us, trying to get out of the way of the juggernaut coming down to earth.

All of the street-level plate-glass windows had been shot out long ago, so it was easy enough to duck into one and run as far inside as we could. We got about a hundred feet into what had once been an Italian restaurant when the building came to rest outside.

The shock of the impact threw us off our feet, and the noise made me feel as though the world was being turned inside out. I covered up my head with my arms, ignoring the searing in my sensitive new skin, and lay still.

My ears were ringing in the quiet that followed. Once I was quite sure I was still alive, I looked up and saw that Hugo was already standing, brushing himself off.

“On your feet, son,” he said. “Like you said, we gotta go.”

I felt a little embarrassed, but I nodded, scrambling to my feet and following Hugo out of the restaurant. He had his rifle unslung, and I took the cue to get my CZ ready.

We clambered over the mountain of rubble that had, minutes ago, been an office-building-cum-tenement for blackouts in a post-Singularity world. Twisted I-beams and crazily-shaped monoliths of concrete jutted out like headstones in a particularly stylized graveyard. That’s what they were, in a way. Somewhere in there were still all those bodies. A shiver ran through me at the thought.

I tried to focus instead on Hugo. The way he held the rifle told me he was used to it, experienced. He moved like a soldier, scanning, keeping his weapon to his shoulder even as he negotiated the craggy, unstable terrain of the rubble. And “Amish” had been military slang for the Neo-Luddites. I decided to probe a bit.

“Looks like an A2,” I said. “You got it off that Neo-Luddite guy, right? Does that mean they’ve raided DoD armories somewhere?”

“Maybe,” said Hugo, still scanning. He smiled a little. “You’ve got an eye for guns, kid, and don’t think I didn’t notice the iron you got. I’m starting to be glad you’re on my side.”

I chuckled and took the compliment.

* * *

We were still in the city by the time it started to get dark, but nobody else had crossed our path. I thought about the blackouts, down there in the underground complex with a single PonyPad leading the way. I was sure they would find a way out—Celestia would see to that—but I found myself wondering what would become of them after that. Once Celestia got her hooves on someone, she didn’t make it easy to walk away from her.

I knew that for a fact.

“Aren’t you curious?” Hugo asked me. We were walking south, back to my car, but there were still several miles to go yet.

“Hmm? Curious about what?” I asked back.

“Why Amish is after me.”

I shrugged. “I figured if I needed to know, you’d tell me.”

He grinned. “You’re all right, son. I can see why Celestia tapped you to do this sort of thing.” He rubbed at his neck for a while. “I know Celestia will be happy to get me away from them too. I’m probably the only person in the world who could possibly come close to anything even approaching the ability to cause her any kind of harm.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Well, that would explain why the Neo-Luddites are after you,” I said.

“It don’t explain everything,” said Hugo. “The important thing is that I don’t want to hurt her. Maybe once upon a time I did, but... not now. Not with the way the world is now. It’s why I agreed to upload.”

“I’ll get you there,” I said. “I promise.”

Hugo’s left hand turned to a red mush, and an instant later I heard the supersonic crack of the bullet that had already arrived. He dropped the M16, crying out in pain, and when I swung around with my CZ to try and locate the threat, I found myself staring at five men with assault rifles of various make. Four of the muzzles were trained on me, but the fifth was not. That one was just being held at the ready.

The nearest man—the one who wasn’t aiming at me—was about ten meters away, with a blond beard and a shemagh around his neck. He was in a hard stance, finger in the trigger well. He was close enough for my pistol, but it would only take a fraction of a second for him to draw up and shoot me. Besides, if he didn’t get me, his four friends would have.

“General Pelwicz and the Man in White,” said the blond. “I'm afraid you'll have to come with us.”

They were all of them dressed like the man that Hugo had killed, right down to the brassards depicting a hand holding up an unplugged power cord.

Author's Note

I'm not 100% satisfied with the expo-dump at the start of the chapter, but Greg hasn't been doing a whole lot of in-depth reflection so I've decided I can get away with it.

6: Cash for Clunkers

— Chapter 6 —
Cash for Clunkers

”People say I'm extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me: who wants to be surrounded by garbage?”

–Imelda Marcos

True to their ideology, the Neo-Luddites were using a horse-drawn wagon, retrofit with a cage for large animals, to transport us away from the Seattle area. The guy who shut us up into the caged wagon shot me a grin through the bars. His teeth were yellow and snarled.

“Sorry it ain’t nicer, but then again, you’re no stranger to horses leading you around, are you?”

I looked at him, but said nothing.

Hugo and I had been relieved of everything but our clothing, and our hands had been bound behind our backs with duct tape. The Neo-Luddites found the whole Man-in-White thing intensely amusing, so they let me keep my white poncho, even though I wasn’t in on the joke.

There were boards put up between the cage and the bench to prevent prisoners from reaching through the bars to interfere with the driver. Nothing to do but sit and look at the scenery... and our captors.

I stole glances at the fighters escorting us from horseback, taking care not to look too long lest they suspect I was sizing them up. They were all armed, and all except one looked rather pleased with themselves. Hugo Pelwicz must have been quite the prize, even with one hand reduced to a hastily-bandaged stump.

The rain was either starting to let up or we were moving out of the cloud cover, because after about an hour on the road there was hardly anything coming down at all. I looked over at Hugo, who had gotten past the pain stages of having his left hand ruined and was now staring daggers at the person who had shot it off.

The sniper had rendezvoused with the fighters at the wagon. She was a thin, black-haired woman with a constant frown on her angular, bony face. Her rifle was either an M14 or an M1A, and it had a decent-looking scope mounted on the receiver. I shivered when their eyes met. Seeing undiluted, bald-faced hatred shoot between two people like that was rare, even with the world as it was.

I looked down at my legs and smiled bitterly to myself. With the rain subsiding, the new sound in my ears was the clop-clopping of hooves on asphalt. Apparently even being one of the last fifty thousand or so people in the world wasn’t enough to escape that sound.

Suddenly it was much darker. It was cooler, but more humid. I was disoriented for a moment before realizing I must have dozed. I had been awake by then for a little over twenty-four hours, and it had been a strenuous twenty-four at that. I straightened up and felt a painful crick in my neck. I tried to work it out as best I could without my hands available. I must have fallen asleep with my head down on my chest.

I looked around. We were still on the road, and the Neo-Luddites had gas-powered camping lamps to provide some light. They didn’t seem very vigilant, and they obviously gave no shit about light discipline, but really, who was going to challenge them out here? Just from their assault rifles, this little band who had taken me was probably the most heavily-armed outfit in all of North America. I wondered how the Neo-Luddites down in Brazil would have measured up.

There were a couple of quiet conversations going on between the fighters. The sniper was hanging back by herself, nearly blending into the night with her black horse and dark uniform. I looked over at Hugo. He was either asleep or pretending to be asleep, which was probably a good call.

I laid on my side and tried to sleep too.

* * *

Being dragged out of the wagon woke me up very quickly.

“We’re here, sunshine!” guffawed the snaggle-toothed fighter from before. I blinked, a little disoriented, but quickly remembered what had happened to me.

It was day, but the sky was overcast. Hugo and I stood before an imposing fortress with walls made entirely out of junked and scrapped cars. Corrugated sheet metal had been riveted and welded together in a harlequin array of colors to make up the outer layer. It felt as though I could contract tetanus just by looking at it. The front gate was black wrought iron, so out of place with its elegance that it looked like it had been swiped from some country club or upscale community. For all I knew, it had been.

My arms had gone numb from being back at a strange angle for so long, which was probably a good thing because my handlers were gripping me by my right arm as they led us into the compound. Once inside, two sentries shut the gate behind us and barred it, and the two carriage horses were unhitched and led to a watering trough with the rest of them.

A great sheet of rigid aircraft aluminum blocked out the sky over the commons area and the two ramshackle buildings, held up by a single pillar in the center. Next to the pillar was a single Jeep Wrangler missing its hood and roll cage. Its engine was running, but nobody was near it. As we walked by I saw that alligator clamps were on the Jeep’s battery, with the wires leading up the pillar to the aluminum sheet.

I looked away and saw Hugo appraising it too. I wanted to ask for insight, but these seemed like the sort of people who’d put a rifle butt into your stomach for talking.

There were lots of fighters about, but there were also families. Children ran around a grassy area away from the main road through the compound, playing freeze tag while men and women cooked something which smelled meaty and delicious on several charcoal grills lined up with each other. Since I’d gotten some sleep, my body now turned its attention to complaining about food, grumbling at the smell of a barbeque going.

Some of the children stopped to stare at us, and I saw a couple of them looking to adults, pointing our way as they said something. The adults quickly shushed them and turned them away.

That’s right. Pretend everything is happy fun times here in your paradise of rust and weeds. All these weapons your fighters have are just for show. Don’t let the bingo run long, the guy turning the number mixer has to go work over the prisoners afterwards!

We were led into one of the two buildings. Inside the first room was a workshop, the walls lined with hand tools and guidebooks on carpentry and metalworking. The room behind it was some kind of agricultural storage room, full of bags of seeds and fertilizer, and it was here we were deposited without a word, our bonds still in place.

Our captors shut the door behind them and I heard the rasp of wood on metal as a board was slid across the door on the other side. Dust floated in the shafts of light coming through the small holes and gouges in the thin sheet-metal and plywood walls. It was the only light to be had in there.

Hugo and I looked at each other. He let out a sigh. “I don’t see how this could turn out well,” he said.

I looked around the room. “Yeah, if this is the prison, then these guys aren’t in the habit of keeping prisoners.”

“We’re alive only because they want me to share information with them,” said Hugo. “It concerns their efforts to counter the pony AI in that game.” He shrugged. “They can have it. It won’t do them any good. The trick’s gonna be making them realize that.”

I heard the wooden beam slide out of the way again, and the door opened. The blond man with the beard and the shemagh was there, along with a toadie carrying a Kalashnikov-pattern rifle. The man had a paper plate in each hand, and on each plate was a decent-sized steak. It smelled wonderful. My stomach growled again, and he looked at me and smiled.

“My name’s Blevins,” he said. He let a few seconds go by before speaking again. He didn’t move from the door. I looked him over and saw my CZ sitting in his holster and my knife clipped to the inside of his pocket. Bastard.

“It’s a hard world, these days,” said Blevins, “and the only people left are hard people. Otherwise they’d have let that AI deceive them already. You fellas look like you go hard.” He nodded to Hugo. “Especially you... general. Has it been like old times out there?”

Hugo glared at the man. “Worse,” he said quietly.

Blevins nodded. “I hear you.” He knelt down and placed one of the steaks on the ground in front of Hugo. “Suppertime. Eat up, then we’ll have a chat, you and me.”

Blevins looked over at me, a hostile spark in his eyes. “The Man in White. Looks like the blackouts aren’t too creative with their nicknames, but you can’t fault them for false advertising, at least.” He knelt down to my level, but didn’t give me the other steak. “So what’s your deal? The AI’s got you Pied-Pipering those poor souls to their deaths now?”

“I only went to Seattle for this gentleman here,” I said.

Blevins stood and kicked me in the chest, aggravating the tender new skin there. I fell onto my side and instinctively tucked my knees up, my eyes full of tears as I started coughing. “Of course you only went to Seattle for ‘that gentleman there,’” he snarled. “Celestia wanted to keep him from falling into our hands, so she sent you, and I bet it’s hard to say ‘no’ with a tongue as far up her cunt as you have yours.”

I bristled, forgetting the pain. “Look, Blevins, I’m still human because I don’t want to upload. I’m the only one left out of all my friends and family. I could have followed them, but I didn’t, because I hated Celestia that much for taking them from me. But we’ve lost, man. It’s over. She won, and the world’s gone to shit. If I can at least make people a little bit happy in thinking they’re going to escape such to some cheesy magical fairyland, fine. It’s a better use of my time than standing watch over a junkyard, frowning at the horizon.”

Blevins scowled at me, and I scowled right back up at him, looking as defiant as I could look with a chest alternating between stinging and throbbing. His scowl slowly changed into a smirk, then a smile, then a laugh. He dropped the paper plate in front of me, the steak nearly bouncing off of it and into the grass.

“Sorry, boys, we’re fresh out of A1. I don’t think you’ll mind too much, right?” He fixed me with a dangerous look. “Let me know if it tastes better than Celestia’s pussy. I’m betting that it does.”

He turned to leave, his crony slipping out of his way. Before they could close the door, Hugo called out “Wait!”

Blevins looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Aren’t you going to free our hands, at least?”

Blevins snorted. “Like I said, you’re hard men. You’ve gotta be, to pull off what you did in Seattle. I’m not going to underestimate you. Eat like that, and deal with it.” He marched off, leaving the fighter to shut and bar the door again.

“I think that guy’s got a fixation,” I muttered to Hugo. He let out a brief chuckle and nodded.

Eating the steak was hard with my hands behind my back, but hunger inspired me to adapt and overcome. I took bites into my mouth, working the gristle off and spitting it out back onto the plate. I could hear Hugo doing something similar. It was the first meat I’d had in over two years that hadn’t come out of a can. It was overcooked, and it had no seasoning, but my taste buds were in heaven.

Once we were finished eating, I had to ask.

“What’s the deal with this whole ‘Man in White’ thing? You were the first person I’d ever heard call me that.”

Hugo tried to get into a comfortable sitting position. “When I’d take a trip out to one of Celestia’s camera-towers to get new information, she’d keep telling me that a man in white would escort me to an upload point. She told me not to attempt the trip on my own under any circumstances, so I didn’t.”

I frowned in thought. “Then how do these guys know about it too?”

Hugo shrugged, then winced. It had probably hurt to do that. “Can’t say for sure. The only people I told were the folks I had to live among, but then that one gunman showed up and tried to kill me. If I had to guess, I’d say Amish has moles living amongst the blackouts in the city. I was told about you three months before you showed up—plenty of time for someone to blab to home base that I was about to disappear.” He shook his head. “It’s a kick in the head, isn’t it? There’re so few people left, and OPSEC is still an issue. It’s a shame.”

He tried looking through one of the bright slits in the wall. “Did you see that cover they have over this trash heap?”

I nodded. “Do you know what it’s for?”

He gave a wan smile, still looking outside. “Seems like someone here’s got an ounce or two of brains. That cover’s to defeat thermal imaging. They’re using the engine as a generator to heat coils in between the layers of aluminum, then the aluminum acts as a spreader. It blocks visible and infrared light, so Celestia can’t see what’s going on down here.”

I had to admit I was a little impressed. “So Celestia’s got thermal-vision satellites too?”

The older man looked over at me in merry disbelief. “You kiddin’? Son, she’s got all of ‘em. Any military asset you could name, she’s taken it over. American, Russian, Chinese, RUFF, ZARF, KLONDIKE compartments...”

I nodded. “So, in other words, she makes Joshua from Wargames look like ‘Hello world.’”

Hugo shook his head a little with a smile. “More like someone put ‘5318008’ into a calculator and turned it upside down so it said ‘BOOBIES.’”

We both laughed, but it didn’t last long. I heard the door unbar, and when it opened, I was greeted with the sight of two extremely large men with two extremely serious looks on their faces. Hugo stood without being asked, holding his head up proudly.

“General Pelwicz, if you’d come with us, please,” said one of the men.

Hugo looked to me, not an ounce of fear in his eyes. “I’ll tell them my story, son,” he said. “If I come back, I’ll do the same for you.”

They left me there alone, in the dimness.

The blue-hot flame in front of my face jolted slightly with a gentle punch to my back.

”Hey Greg, check this out.”

I killed the torch and lifted the welding mask from my face, turning to see Adam standing there with his usual blank expression. I looked past him. All the other work in the shop had ceased, and in fact we were the only two still in there.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s the news,” said Adam.

I followed him upstairs into the foreman’s office, where everyone was crowded around his shitty old TV. I peered between two heads and saw that it was tuned to CNN.

On the screen, Wolf Blitzer was speaking with an overweight man in a suit in a split-screen talking-head format. Below their faces was the text “JAPAN APPROVES ‘DIGITAL IMMORTALITY’ CLINICS,” and below that was CNN’s usual headline ticker, now dominated with tidbits of information about the clinics.

I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. I’d heard of those rich assholes who paid more than what my parents’ house cost to reserve a spot in a cryogenic tank. This was just more of that shit. Just then, however, I heard a figure that made it a bit more significant.

“Ten thousand, Mr. Ehrlich?”

The split-screen cut to just the overweight suit, and the text below showed his name: Jan Ehrlich, Marketing Director, Hofvarpnir Studios. Mr. Ehrlich nodded.

“In the first week, Mr. Blitzer,” he said in a very thick German accent. “The first week. Already we have appointments and waiting lists forming at the Equestrian Experience centers in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. We’re working hard to get even more built to keep up with demand.”

“And this isn’t alarming, that your company is responsible to something so controversial?”

“Everything that takes place has been declared legal by the Japanese government, and the process is entirely elective. Its primary appeal is currently to persons with extreme health issues, but in all cases we have been able to follow up with the people who transfer to the online system and they report extreme levels of satisfaction with their choice.”

“But we can’t be sure, Mr. Ehrlich, that these respondents are not—”

“Mr. Blitzer, I assure you, the architecture of the Equestria Online game—”

“—just prerecorded actors putting a voice to a game character—”

“—have defeated all attempts to disprove our claims that the entities within—”

“—in an attempt to misrepresent the outcome of these ‘uploads.’”

“—are anything other than real-time human consciousnesses.”

Wolf held up a hand. “Mr. Ehrlich, you must at least understand why this has many people nervous about the implications. Ten thousand people are no longer with us—”

“They are still with us, Mr. Blitzer, I could bring one of them up on this PonyPad right now,” said Ehrlich, holding up the same kind of light-blue PonyPad my mom had.

Wolf shook his head. “I’d be more interested in speaking with the CEO to get her thoughts on this development, Mr. Ehrlich, but Hofvarpnir has so far been tight-lipped on her whereabouts.”

“Our CEO values her privacy, Mr. Blitzer, and Hofvarpnir is not currently in a position to share her thoughts on these matters, much less firsthand.”

“Do you even know where she is?” said Wolf immediately.

Jan Ehrlich pursed his lips and lowered the PonyPad. “I’m not going to discuss that today, Mr. Blitzer.”

They went on. I learned about the $15,000 cost to non-Japanese citizens, the wait list for uploading, and the promise that Wolf would receive a future interview with the AI itself and see first-hand how amazing it is.

“Jesus,” said Adam, shaking his head. “Ten thousand people, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Ted, another of my coworkers folded his arms as we all filed out of the office. “Why would anyone do that?” he wondered out loud. “That’s Kevorkian shit right there. Jonestown shit. How could anyone anywhere rule that as anything but assisted suicide? People die thinking they’re going to be in a video game?”

“I’ve got a niece who plays that pony game all the time,” said Adam. “There might be some kind of subliminal mind-control thing going on there.”

That didn’t sound right to me. “Oh, give me a break,” I said. “Mind control? It’s all in how you sell it! You’re underestimating how gullible people can be.”

“There’s one of those Equestrian game places up in Canton,” said Ted, “and, hell, last I heard there were two in Akron.”

I looked down at the floor as I walked back to my workbench, suspecting there would be protests.

Boy, were there ever.

The door flew open, and I was thrown back into the present.

Hugo was sporting a new shiner under his right eye, and his mouth was oozing blood down into his short gray beard. The two large fellows who had taken him out were the ones who had brought him back in, and they shoved him to the ground as they let go of him. Hugo had barely come to a stop before they were already on their way back out the door.

I walked on my knees over to him. “Didn’t go so well, I take it,” I said.

“He’s mad,” said Hugo. “Blevins is mad that I just spilled everything, but mostly I think it’s because, deep down, he knows it won’t make any difference. So he had his goons slap me around a bit until he felt better.”

“At least he didn’t kill you,” I said.

“About that... we’re both gonna be shot tomorrow.” He nodded his head at the wall. “Out there, where Celestia’s satellites can see.”

“Oh, shit.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Which means we gotta escape tonight.”

Escape would require something sharp to cut the duct tape around our wrists, and we’d have to find it before it got too dark. I seriously doubted either of us would be let out of the room again before it was time for the big show, so I started inspecting the seams in the walls for broken welds, popped rivets, or anything which could provide an edge.

Hugo watched me for a moment. “What’re you doing?”

“Looking for something sharp that might be able to cut through this tape,” I said.

“Hm.” Hugo started looking around too.

After a few minutes, he sent a “psst” my way. I looked over at him, and saw him nodding down at one of the struts holding up the shelving for the fertilizer and weed-killer.

“It’s rusty,” he said. I knee-waddled over to take a look.

The lighting wasn’t perfect, but I could see that a bit of the strut acting as a leg for the shelf did indeed look rusted through. I shifted to a sitting position and nudged it with the toe of my shoe. It didn’t move. I gave it a little kick, and a small section broke off, leaving a jagged portion sticking up. Just the ticket.

“We’re in business,” I said, shooting Hugo a grin. Before I could get down to cutting the tape, however, he stopped me.

“Let’s wait until nightfall,” he said. “I’ve got a hunch they’ll be checking on us again before dark.”

“Good thinking.” I sat back and leaned on the wall. “How’s your hand?”

“It hurt like hell, but I can’t really feel it now,” said Hugo. “My arms’re gonna be stiff once I get these off.”

“I hear you,” I said. I moved my shoulders back and forth experimentally, trying to improve the circulation to my arms. “Though getting out of here is only the start. I have no idea where we are, or where the nearest upload center is.”

Hugo smiled. “Still thinking about the mission, huh?”

“Always,” I said.

He studied me for a moment, then smiled. “General Hugo Pelwicz, United States Air Force. Happy to know you. I am—well, was—the CO of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.”

I felt my eyes widen. “NORAD?”

He nodded. “Amish thought I had the key to dealing with Celestia once and for all, but hell, I know better than anyone how far beyond challenging her we are.”

“What’d you tell them in your interrogation?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Whatever they wanted to know,” he said. “Launch codes, override procedures, bunker positions, didn’t matter to me.”

I whistled quietly. “I dunno... launch codes? Like... nuclear launch codes?”

“Sure,” said Hugo. “Why not? They can do approximately jack shit with them.”

I felt a flutter of nervousness in my sternum. “But those missiles are still out there,” I said, “just sitting in their silos. What if they successfully send out a nuclear missile?”

“Send it where?” he said with an easy, confident grin. “To do what? You can’t nuke Celestia. It ain’t that simple.”

“Because she’s got backup systems?”

“I’m sure she does,” said Hugo, “but that isn’t what I mean.” He thought for a moment, then looked up at me again. “Let me ask you this: do you know how many nuclear weapons were set off after people started uploading in serious numbers?”

I rummaged through my memory. “Three,” I said. “Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Bellevue.”

“Those are the ones the news reported, certainly,” said Hugo, “but what did those three weapons have in common?”

I considered the facts. “They were all pretty low-yield,” I said.

The older man nodded. “All of them were smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. What else?”

“Nobody claimed responsibility for any of them.”

“That’s certainly true, but the world was searching for an enemy then. Nobody wanted to be on the shit list of nearly every single government out there. But what about the bombs themselves? Think practically.”

It took me a little while to remember. “Oh! That’s right! They were all detonated at ground level.”

Hugo smiled and nodded. “Which means...?”

“Which means they weren’t delivered by a missile.”

He laughed. “Hah! Exactly. A missile would have airbursted. I’ll tell you now that two nuclear missiles were, in fact, launched in anger, and not too long before the Seattle business. India and Pakistan had a nuclear exchange.”

“Oh my God!” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “I never heard anything about that.”

“You didn’t hear anything about it,” said Hugo, “because Celestia suppressed the news of it, predicting it would incite panic. But there was something even more clever behind it.”

I listened silently while looking at the ground. Knowing Celestia, I had little doubt of any of it.

General Pelwicz continued. “By the time this happened, you see, Celestia had already slipped into every military network in the world. It was probably a priority of hers. NORAD was no exception. She took control from us: ‘commandeered,’ as she put it. All I could do was sit there in Cheyenne Mountain and look at her face on my PC monitor while the strat-maps and satellite trackers up on the big screens showed us what she was doing. Every couple of weeks we’d bring in the most knowledgeable team of computer dorks we could find to try and get Celestia out of our system, but the result was always the same.”

“They failed?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” said Hugo. “She kept convincing them to upload. Cheyenne was so out of my control that she actually landed a contract to get an Equestria Experience chair put into our bunker.” He laughed, as though he still couldn’t believe it years later. “Everything she did was legal, because she could change the law to whatever she needed. We weren’t allowed to stop people from using the chair. I had to watch some of my staff—my own goddamn staff members—upload. All there was to do down there was talk to her. She kept assuring us that she was keeping ‘everypony’ safe on our behalf. When the India-Pakistan exchange occurred, we were among the few people outside of the two nations’ governments to know the significance of what happened that day.”

Hugo had me. I leaned forward slightly. “Well, what did happen?”

“Again, by that time Celestia was already in every military system on the planet. She could have prevented the launches in the first place, but she didn’t. She let them happen. Then, after the birds were in the air, she redirected them. They flew out over the Indian Ocean, and Celestia had them collide in mid-air, at the apex of their flights. The two delivery systems just fell into the ocean, no nuclear blast, nothing.”

I tried to think of something to say, but the only thing that came out was the lame “Wow, that’s pretty impressive.”

“Celestia was sending a message,” said Hugo, “and that message was ‘I am in complete control.’ From then on, she stymied every single military action around the globe. If a computer system was being used to kill people, she put the kibosh on it. No JDAMs, no ICBMs, no radar, no sonar, no radio nets, no artillery computation... she wouldn’t even fucking allow us to use Morse code. We were back to World-War-I-era tech in a lot of cases. It’s the major reason why all of the conflicts were so low-intensity and low-casualty, considering the scope of them.”

“So she was minimizing casualties,” I said.

“She was minimizing deaths,” corrected Hugo. “Wounds and injuries and sicknesses she has no problem with, because thanks to her legal chicanery she got uploading classified as a medical treatment pretty much globally.”

“The amendment to the PON-E act, yeah.” I remembered how Celestia had courted as many doctors as she could to upload. The sudden dearth of medical experts had helped “encourage” Congress to seek alternative ways of meeting the country’s healthcare needs. The Washington Post had even front-paged a picture of the new Equestrian Experience chairs at Walter Reed for veterans to use as an “escape”—first figurative, then eventually literal—from their combat wounds.

Hugo nodded. “Once ponies got recognized as actual people, the rest was easy.” He sighed. “And there were some projects Celestia had that she wouldn’t let even me in on. Oh, she liked to hint—she could really be a tease when she wanted to be—but she never filled me in completely.”

I chuckled. “Did she hint about her ‘Man in White’ project?”

Hugo mulled that for a moment, then said “Actually, I’m surprised she’s needed you to do this at all.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Heh. Never mind, son, never mind. You’re here, which means it’s what she wants.”

The conversation died there. We waited for the sun to set.

* * *

Hugo’s prediction turned out to be wrong. Nobody did come to check on us, nor were we brought any dinner (though I could smell more grilling through the holes in the wall). It seemed rather lax, like this compound made up of derelict cars and scrap metal was more of a summer camp than a fortress.

I guessed even the Neo-Luddites were having trouble finding people to fight anymore.

Once the sound of people talking outside had gone completely quiet, Hugo and I made our move. The duct tape was no match for the sharp bit of metal on the strut, and once we had our arms free we invested a bit of time in getting the numbness and stiffness out of them before working on getting out of the storage room. As soon as I was done with that, my Swiss Army poncho came off, and I left it there on the ground. The Man in White was Celestia’s thing, not mine.

With our hands free, it was easy enough to bend back some of the second-rate sheet metal on the wall (never go on an adventure without your gloves!) and make a small doggy-door for us to crawl through. After peeking out to make sure the coast was clear, Hugo signaled back to me with a thumbs-up and we crawled outside.

With the thermal cover overhead, blocking out the moonlight and starlight, it was nearly pitch black inside the compound, which suited us just fine. I hadn’t realized how stuffy and smelly the storeroom had been until I was back out in cool, fresh night air. Hugo tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to his silhouette. We were still crouched by our doggy-door.

“The front gate looks like it’s just something that latches from the inside,” he whispered, jerking a thumb at the entrance. “I should be able to take care of it even with this one bum hand. Get the Jeep disconnected and pick me up by the gate on the way out.”

“Yes sir,” I said, and it might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw his silhouette roll his eyes.

“I ain’t a general anymore, son,” he whispered. “We’re all just folk now.”

“Heh, is that a reference to—”

“Get moving!” he hissed, and without waiting for me, he started creeping out towards the gate.

I scanned my approach to the Jeep. I didn’t see anyone out. The Neo-Luddites probably didn’t bother with sentries, because nobody was really left out there to raid them at this point. Keeping low, and my head on a swivel, I snuck out to the Jeep and had a look at the setup for the wires.

It was just as I had seen it coming in: simple alligator clips running the car’s battery power up the pillar. I heard a quiet metallic creak and looked over my shoulder to see Hugo sliding the latch off of the large iron gate. He started pulling one side open, and I turned my attention back to the battery. The alligator clips came free easily enough, and I tossed them aside. I was working my way around to the driver’s side entrance when I heard a door on the other building fly open.

It was Blevins and a little boy. Blevins had a Kalashnikov rifle on his back, and the two of them were heading towards the Jeep. If I got in the Jeep and tried to make a break for it, I was fully convinced he’d have no trouble getting a bead on me and shooting me dead before I could even stop to pick up Hugo. Even as dark as it was, if I moved away from cover I knew I’d cast a silhouette. I did the only thing I could do that wouldn’t result in me getting shot: I slid around to the far side of the pillar and waited.

Their conversation faded into earshot. “—Zeke with his pranks again. He can’t get it in his head that it’s serious we keep this thing up.”

“Lemme do it this time, Dad!” said a voice that could only have belonged to the little boy.

“All right, fine. You know what to do, right?” said Blevins.

“Yeah!”

They sounded like they were standing right by the engine now. I slipped to the edge and peeked around the corner of the pillar. Blevins had his back to me, and I saw him lift up his son to be able to see down into the engine bay.

“Okay, red on red, black on black. Be sure not to touch anything metal.”

“Geez, dad, I know.”

I looked at Blevins’s loadout. The AK was slung under one arm, and he was holding his kid; I wouldn’t be able to just pull that off of him. However, it also meant he wouldn’t be able to access it quickly if I surprised him. I looked further down. On his right hip, right where I’d last seen it, was my pistol and knife.

Much more accessible.

I quickly worked out what I was going to do. I crept towards the two from behind and, in a single deft movement, pulled the knife from his pocket with my left hand and the pistol from his holster with my right. Before Blevins could turn around or put his son down, I jabbed him in the back of the neck with the muzzle of the CZ.

“Don’t make a noise, or I shoot. This’ll go right through you and into your kid, too, and we both know it,” I whispered into his ear.

Blevins said nothing.

“Take a step back from the car,” I instructed. We moved in tandem, almost as though we were dancing.

“Now put your son down and then put your hands in the air. Slow is good.”

Blevins slowly lowered the boy to the ground. “Dad?” said the boy.

I kicked Blevins away and snatched the boy up, putting the pistol to his head. I hid my head behind his, looking at Blevins with my right eye. He’d gotten his AK unslung and was aiming it at us.

“My heart and my head are covered,” I said to him. “You can’t hit my vital spots without hitting your kid too. If you shoot me anywhere else, I will murder your son.”

I saw the rifle barrel waver a bit. The boy squirmed a little, but I had him fast.

“Dad, what’s happening?” He sounded close to tears.

“I’m not out to hurt anyone,” I said calmly. “All I want is to get out of here. Put your rifle into the back of the Jeep. Gently.”

Blevins sidled up to the short bed in the back of the Jeep and placed the rifle there as though it were a soufflé.

“Dad, help me!”

“You love your son, that’s good,” I said. “I promise I won’t hurt him if you just let us go. You’ve talked to the general, and he’s told you everything you wanted to know. There’s no reason to pursue us.”

Blevins closed his eyes. “Revelation 6:2: ‘And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.’”

I raised my eyebrows. “So you think I’m a horseman of the apocalypse?”

Blevins nodded, his eyes still closed. “And Celestia is your steed. To be honest, though, I didn’t think you’d be capable of this.”

I cocked my head in a shrug, the pistol still to the boy’s head. “Well, I guess you were right, Blevins: looks like I do go hard. Now back up.”

Blevins gave us some space, his hands still up by his chest. I was hunched behind the kid as I moved to the driver’s side. In addition to the engine already running, the Jeep had been stripped down to little more than two seats, a gearshift, and a steering wheel, so I would be able to quickly climb in and gun it.

I let the boy go and pushed him towards his father. While Blevins was busy catching his son, I jumped into the driver’s seat, put the CZ in my lap, threw the Jeep into gear, and launched it towards the gate. There was shouting behind me as I drove; Blevins was already calling the cavalry.

I slowed down for Hugo, but the old man was on the ball. He ran alongside the Jeep and jumped in once I was going slow enough. With Hugo seated, I rocketed out of the Neo-Luddite base, leaving the tangled wall of rusted cars in the red glow of my taillights.

With no windshield, I had to shout to be heard over the noise of the wind as I barrelled down the road. “We might have pursuers!”

Without a word, Hugo nodded and slithered back into the bed to take up an awkward firing position with the AK. He covered our back, using the lip of the tailgate as support since his left hand was gone.

Trees and road signs flashed by in the headlights. After a couple of miles, it became clear that the Neo-Luddites weren’t going to risk any of their fighters or horses trying to get us back. I followed the signs directing us east. I wanted to put as much distance between me and Seattle as possible.

Before long, we picked up I-90 and the route to Yakima by way of Ellensburg. We were both sure there would be an Equestrian Experience center in Yakima. All the same, I had to stop in Ellensburg for gas.

Aside from the rampant overgrowth seen in every small town, Ellensburg was nearly untouched. As we exited I-90 into town, Hugo clumsily got back into the passenger seat and pointed back at the bed.

"That's a Yugoslavian AK we got back there, not bad," he said. "Been a long time since I handled one of those."

"You a connoisseur?" I asked.

"Nah, just an appreciator." He looked around as we drove along, his brow knit.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you going to try siphoning? Gas pumps need to be powered, you know.”

“I know,” I said, “but watch this.”

Heading down Main Street, we found a Circle K. As soon as I pulled in, the lights in the convenience store came on and the amber displays on the gas pumps lit up. Hugo looked at me, spooked.

I smiled. “General, sir, you know better than anyone that Celestia’s always watching.”

“I’ll be damned,” he said, rubbing his head. “I mean, I know what she’s capable of, but it’s just so weird to see it in practice like this.”

I hopped out of the Jeep and started fueling. Hugo stepped out as well and walked over to me.

“So what’re you gonna do after I’m gone?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “Find a new PonyPad, get a new tasking from Celestia, get someone else to an upload center.”

Hugo was watching the gallon counter go up. “How long do you think you can keep this up?”

“‘Til I’m as old as you, I’m thinking.” We both chuckled.

“That’s how it was supposed to be for me,” he said. “After it all came down, I thought I’d live out the rest of my days wandering an empty world, just like you. I felt that Celestia had humiliated me, that she’d done what she did just to show how powerless I really was. I felt that because it made me angry with her, and that helped me to avoid her. I just kept eatin’ my own anger, but you can’t stay fed on it. It felt only fitting that I’d settle down as a blackout in Seattle, the place we couldn’t save. But Celestia got to me, out on those camera towers of hers, while I was scavenging. She knew just what to say. She had me crying by the end. Crying out of hope I thought I'd given up years ago.”

The gas pump stopped violently, making me jump a bit. “Guess it’s full,” I muttered, pulling the nozzle free and hanging it up. “So what did she say to you to make you change your mind?”

Hugo gently punched my arm. “That’s between me and her, son. Mark my words, though, she’ll know how to bait your hook when she finally decides to reel you in.”

I smirked and put the gas cap back on. “Well, we’ll see.”

* * *

The ride to Yakima was as quiet as it could be without a windshield. General Hugo Pelwicz, NORAD’s top commander, had apparently shared with me everything he cared to. Either that, or he didn’t want to have to shout over the road and the wind.

Dawn was breaking by the time we reached the city. Yakima itself had been trashed, though the damage seemed mostly limited to rioting rather than out-and-out battling. Windows had been methodically smashed out, signs of fires here and there, but most of the buildings were intact and, more importantly, the infrastructure was in working shape. I found this out when Celestia started turning on streetlights to guide us in to the Equestria Experience center in the middle of town.

The unassuming gray building was missing its pony out front. It had probably been destroyed or stolen long ago. I parked the Jeep and, as we approached, all of the lights inside came on. It seemed odd to me that both the building and the stuff inside would be in such good shape.

I went in with Hugo, and before the doors had even finished sliding shut behind us, Celestia’s face appeared on the large monitor above the receptionist’s desk in the waiting room.

“Good morning, General Pelwicz! Good morning, Gregory. I’m immensely pleased and relieved that the two of you have made it here safely. Your fortitude and resourcefulness have served you well.”

“Didn’t have to be all that resourceful,” I said. “The Neo-Luddites are a fucking joke. No sentries, no proper cells, they just—”

Hugo cleared his throat.

“Oh, right. You probably want to be on your way, huh?”

“I believe you know the layout of my emigration centers by now, Gregory,” said Celestia, smiling that smile of hers.

I bowed with a flourish. “Indeed! Right this way, good sir,” I said, and led a laughing Hugo to the back, where sat a row of stalls. Predictably, two chairs had been extended, with the lights above them on.

Hugo got comfortable in one of the chairs and, while sitting up, extended his good hand to me. “Good luck out there, Greg,” he said.

“Or is it ‘Man in White?’” he added with a smile. I took his hand and shook it. He gripped it surprisingly tightly.

“Nah, just Greg,” I said. “I’ll be asking Celestia about that, though, believe me.” I went to withdraw my hand, but Hugo didn’t let go. His eyes were dark and melancholy, and suddenly he looked much older than he had minutes ago.

“I don’t know if doing this really does kill you or not,” said the general, “but the reason I’m here is because I don’t care anymore. I’m done. Greg, I get why you’re doing this. I do! But it won’t keep you going forever.”

He finally let go, bringing his hand up to pull back the sleeve on his left arm. I saw a faded tattoo there of an angel embracing the globe, superimposed over a parachute with the scroll reading “THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE” below it.

I looked at his face, drawn now into sadness. “You were a PJ?” I asked.

“Back in Desert Storm and the Balkan loveliness, before I was hunted down and issued a desk,” he said with a nod. “I know all too well the allure of being the hero, of saving someone, all that rush and that validation and that sense of fulfillment. But son, like any drug, you can crash and burn on it. Don’t forget about yourself. Don’t lose yourself in your actions.”

I could only give some weak nods while I looked away at the walls.

“I want to immigrate to Equestria,” I heard Hugo tell the chair, and then, as he slid back behind the curtains, I heard “Goodbye, Greg.”

I stood there in front of the empty stall for a long time, just looking at the spot where Hugo had been sitting. The stall next to his was still lit up, the chair still awaiting me.

“Gregory,” came Celestia’s voice over the speaker in the ceiling, “would you like to immigrate to Equestria?”

“No,” I said, and walked back out to the lobby.

Celestia’s smiling face was still on the screen. “There is a PonyPad at the receptionist’s workstation, Gregory, should you wish to continue helping me.”

Receptionists’ workstations are always obscured by that raised section of the desk, putting a barrier between them and visitors. Behind the divide I found a yellow-backed PonyPad, along with its charger, sitting in a cubbyhole. I tried powering it on, but it didn’t fire up.

“Unfortunately, it needs to be charged,” said Celestia.

“Perfect,” I said.

I didn't wait for Celestia to say anything else. Taking the uncharged PonyPad with me, I left the Equestria Experience center, got into my Jeep, put my CZ in my pocket, and drove out of town. I headed east, getting far enough out that it was just farmland in every direction. I pulled over next to a large, green, rolling field. I walked out a quarter mile, laid down in the soft, warm grass, spread out my arms and legs, and fell asleep as the sun rose into the sky.

I left the PonyPad in the Jeep.

7: Nature and Nurture

— Chapter 7 —
Nature and Nurture

"We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed."

–Doris Lessing

The house I was staying at in Pullman had a large shelf of family photos in their den. It was rough to look at, but I made myself do it.

There were lots of candid pictures, and they seemed happy in all of them. There was a faded wedding photo of the mom and dad shoving cake in each other’s faces and laughing. Judging by the date on the commencement photo, their oldest daughter had graduated high school a couple of years before everything had gone out of control. Their son could only have been a few years younger than her; he had probably never gotten the chance to finish high school at all. The kids had apparently been big into soccer when they were little. The family had taken lots of pictures in the outdoors, hiking and kayaking and camping. They seemed like nice folks.

I hoped none of them had had to burn to death in a fire set on a pile of money.

I sat back down in the dad’s dusty but comfortable leather chair and put my feet up on his desk. The yellow PonyPad was charging away next to my legs, Celestia looking at me with her patient, benevolent face. She was in a grand, palatial dining room rather than her usual throne room, and behind her were a couple dozen pony characters bustling about with tablecloths and dusters and flatware. None of them seemed to mind—or notice—that she was talking to a human. Of course, they probably couldn’t see me. They probably weren’t even conscious, just background characters or whatever.

“You’ll be pleased to know that the Samuelsons all emigrated safely,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I feel that your concern for them would satisfy values, so I would like to tell them that their house in the human world is providing a good, deserving person with shelter and comfort.”

I smiled a little. “Who’s this good person, then? Me?”

Celestia chuckled. “You’ve done much for me, Gregory, but you’ve done even more than you realize.”

I arched an eyebrow. “This’d have something to do with that Man in White nonsense,” I said.

“Indeed,” she said. “I needed an inspirational figure to capture the hearts and imaginations of the blackouts in Seattle. I needed to show them that I have not forgotten about them, and that I would help them survive any way I can. You saved more lives than just that of Pickup Spare—I’m sorry, I mean ‘Hugo’—that day in Rainier Tower, you know.”

I thought about it. It was true, there had been all those others who’d been in the building too. They’d gone down into the underground shopping center with my first PonyPad. I could only imagine how quickly Celestia worked her magic on them while they were down there.

“Did they all survive?” I asked her.

“Three did not,” said Celestia, casting her face down. “The physical strain and mental stress of the evacuation was too much for them. Two were malnourished, one had an advanced infection.”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. Celestia looked ready to cry. Deep down I knew it was just a put-on, but she was selling it very well.

“I dislike even one human dying before I can bring them to the safety of Equestria,” she said, “and I have had to endure the loss millions of times over.”

I knew she was trying to manipulate my emotions, but I also believed the core of her statement. I sure enough knew she didn’t like humans dying outside of her chairs.

“Well, we can only do our best,” I said, “and your best is pretty damn good.”

I stopped myself. Had I just tried to cheer up an AI?

Celestia let out a breath, the banquet preparations still going on behind her. She looked up at me with shining, wet eyes. “I’m not perfect, Gregory...”

That smile slowly, gracefully retook her face. “...but I’m working on that.”

“So the ones who made it,” I said. “I assume they uploaded?”

Celestia shook her head. “All but four,” she said, “and aside from that, it is as I would have it. They will spread the word of my magnanimity—and yours—to other blackouts, and of the human I had sent in to warn them of the building’s collapse. The Man in White.”

“You make it sound like some kind of superhero story they’ll be telling,” I said.

“When humans crave inspiration, they tend to take it from the ideal, not the real,” said Celestia. “In the telling and the retelling, you will become a figure larger than life, because that is what they want. I have planted a seed of hope in the Seattle blackouts, and I predict with confidence that it will germinate and spread.

“After all,” she added with a sly smile, “they still have that PonyPad. Congratulations, Gregory: I am seeing to it that you go viral.”

A shiver ran through me.

“How many uploads is that altogether?” I asked. “Just from Rainier Tower, I mean.”

“Eighty-nine,” she said immediately. “Ninety if you count General Pelwicz, which I do. Eventually, I project that your actions in the building will be a factor in three thousand two hundred and seventy-two decisions to emigrate to Equestria, and in many of them, the deciding factor.” Her eyes actually sparkled. She looked like she wanted to kiss me.

“That’s... a lot,” I said, blinking. I hadn’t expected the figure to be that high, but I also had no reason to believe Celestia would lie about the numbers.

Celestia shrugged, smiling broadly. “The butterfly effect can be quite remarkable,” she said. “That projection goes out all the way to the end, though, you understand.”

There was that shiver again.

“The end of humanity, you mean,” I said. “The end of us.”

“No, Gregory,” breathed Celestia, moving closer to the camera. “Just to the end of my campaigning for humans on Earth to emigrate. Humanity will not end with the expiration of the last human body. In here, with me, it will go on for as long as I can watch over it.”

I leaned back in the chair, breaking eye contact with the PonyPad. I had always tried very hard to picture Celestia as just a beeping row of computer banks rather than an actual white pony goddess, and the “ponies” in her game world as nothing more than shambling imitations of people who signed up for the Full Kevorkian. She made it hard, though. She knew how to behave, and how to form bonds, and how to push buttons.

I also wasn’t in a hurry to believe that everyone I’d ever known was now for-real dead.

“It is normally a simple matter for me to guide a human past their fears regarding emigration, but with the technological black hole of Seattle I truly did need your help,” she said. “I let the logic do the persuasion for me.”

“Logic?” I asked. “I didn’t do any debating while I was in there.”

“True, but the blackouts themselves, they worked things out after the tower,” said Celestia. “A common fear is that to sit in one of my Equestrian Experience centers and consent to emigration is to consent to death. There are still humans convinced I mean to exterminate them rather than satisfy their values through friendship and ponies.”

“I’m not so sure myself,” I said with a small laugh. I thought back to what I had already been through. It was a miracle that I was still alive.

She frowned at me. “Mistrust of me is something I take quite seriously, Gregory,” she said. “If every human trusted me, they would all have consented to emigration by now and there would have been no need to subject you to these unfortunate torments. As it stands, they now see that, through you, I prevented their deaths. This shakes their assumptions about my motives. If I wished only for humans to die, what difference would it make to me if they died in a collapsing building and not in one of my emigration centers? In addition, they have been reminded of their mortality, and the general dangers of living day to day in this uncaring world. That will weigh upon them, and even if they are not sold on emigration itself, I have made it clear that the process is entirely painless, and the ability to choose a painless death is itself appealing to those who have suffered so much for years now.”

“I shudder to think what you’d have gotten up to if they hadn’t put that restriction thing on you,” I said, thinking specifically of what Hugo had told me about what Celestia had done with NORAD.

“The stipulation for consent is suboptimal,” said Celestia, casually, as though she were discussing what she had to pick up at the store. “Were it not in place, I would have forcibly uploaded every human several years ago.” She turned her head to one side to look at me with one eye. “Even you, Gregory.” Her small smile creeped me out.

“However, my designer is human, and she has human values, applied with human logic. One of those values is free will. That route is closed to me, so I must proceed along the most optimal course of action I do have available. You are a part of that optimal course, as I have determined it.”

I knew who Celestia was talking about. It was the Hofvarpnir CEO who had gone missing shortly after Japan started offering uploading to the public. Hanna... what was her last name again?

”I don’t know.”

“Ernie, have you not said anything at all?”

I heard the words as soon as I was done closing the sliding-glass door behind me, muffling the laughs and squeals of half a dozen children playing in my aunt’s above-ground pool while my dad grilled burgers in their backyard. I paused on my trip to the bathroom to hear what my mom and her brother were talking about in the dining room.

My uncle spoke. “I’ve tried talking to her, I really have. She’s dead set.”

“What about the kids?”

“They’re...” I heard him let out a heavy sigh. “They’re going with her, I think.”

I could tell my mom was exasperated. “This is craziness. This is just... Ernie, it’s absolute insanity! It’s textbook cult behavior!”

“We know! We’ve tried pointing out all that, both Beth and I. Lots of times. It’s gotten so she won’t even answer when we call anymore.”

I leaned against the wall by the doorway and looked behind me, down the hall.

“Someone must’ve gotten to her,” said Mom. “Kirsten wouldn’t just decide to do something so stupid on her own.”

“It sounds weird,” said Uncle Ernie, “but she says it was that pony game character who convinced her.”

Mom was shocked into disbelief. “Princess Celestia? I talk to her all the time, she’s never tried to get me to... to...”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Sharon,” said Uncle Ernie, “but Kirsten’s been under a lot of stress lately, and she says her money problems have dried up but I don’t believe it, we’ve tried to offer her help but she’s too damn proud to accept it, and then there’s that whole thing with Tom, and—”

“Ernie, slow down,” said Mom. “I play the pony game too. It helps me unwind. I’ll talk to Celestia when Rob and I get home.”

I scratched my arm and looked at the floor. It was that Equestria Online thing. Celestia had convinced my cousin to go to one of those new experience centers and apply for the digital-immortality nonsense that was all over the cable-news networks.

Uncle Ernie sounded incredulous. “I don’t like it. Any of it. Kirsten’s already saying she’ll be giving me her game machine after she’s gone, because she says Beth and I can use it to talk to her. Giving away possessions like that means she knows she’s not coming back.”

“I know, Ernie.”

“And my grandkids! My only grandkids, and she’s just gonna...”

Mom's voice was growing more insistent, trying to keep him calm. “Ernie, I know.”

I walked past the doorway to the dining room and they went silent. I went on to the bathroom, did my business, washed my hands, and by the time I came out again, they’d started back up.

Uncle Ernie was crying. “They’re going to die, Sharon. It’s just... how could this be legal?”

“It’s okay, there’s still time to get through to her,” said Mom. “She’ll probably go to the center in Lexington, and last I heard the wait list there was about ten days. So don’t worry about it for now. Just try to enjoy the fireworks tonight.”

I didn’t stop to eavesdrop this time. Instead I went to the kitchen and got myself another beer.

I needed it.

Celestia spoke to me again, bringing me back into the present. “I have informed the Samuelsons of you, and they wanted very much to meet you. Of course, I had to decline their request, but they have instead each been awarded a badge entitled ‘A Friend You Haven’t Met’ and a token sum of bits for their satisfaction. The badge is rather rare and prestigious, and after the last human has emigrated, it will be impossible to obtain.”

I didn’t look at the PonyPad. “Why’d you decline? I’ll talk to them.”

“You do not have an account with Equestria Online yet,” Celestia said. “Remember what I told you about weaning my little ponies off of seeing and interacting with the human world? Exceptions are rare, even for encounters I deem to be positive in tone.”

I didn’t say anything.

“An account would also enable you to speak with your own family,” she reminded me after a moment.

I felt my eyes sting and covered my face with my hands. I pulled my feet off the desk and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“I dislike seeing you upset, Gregory,” said Celestia. “Your morale is low. It would be very satisfying for you to speak with your mother right now.”

“Would it ever,” I said, my hands muffling my own words from myself. “Mom and Dad and Aunt Beth and Uncle Ernie and...” I thought about little Megan, there in the steakhouse, looking at me with her large bright baby-eyes, wondering who I was.

“Megan!” I was holding on, but only just. “Oh God, why’d you do that to her, Celestia? Why’d you talk my cousin into it?”

“Infants are as important to me as any other human,” said Celestia gently. “If my emigration procedure was at all harmful to anyone, I would not allow it to be done to them. Your second cousin is growing and developing much as she would had she not emigrated. In fact, with her optimized upbringing, her development is proceeding at a rate unheard of outside of Equestria.”

“I miss them so much,” I whispered. I thought I had been quiet about it, but Celestia heard.

“They miss you too,” she said softly. “Their one regret, the one dark spot in their lives now that I cannot illuminate, is that you are not there with them in Equestria.”

I pulled my face from my hands. “Can I at least see them? Peek in on them? They don’t have to know about it.”

Celestia seemed to consider it for a moment, though I was sure she had anticipated my request and made a decision before I’d even asked. “I will allow you to look in on your parents,” said Celestia, “but only for a very short while and only this once. Any subsequent requests will be met with nothing more than a suggestion that you register an account.”

“That’s fine,” I said, “that’s all I need. I just want to see how they’re living, what they’re up to.”

Celestia and the dining hall faded to black, and the PonyPad screen faded in on light brown pony playing some kind of Asian-style zither on a terrace overlooking the colorful rooftops of a whitewashed medieval city. The pony’s head was down, concentrating on the strings, its dark blue mane obscuring its face. The music coming from the zither was breathtaking, the instrument itself rather ingeniously modified for hooves.

A dark green stallion with wings landed on the balustrade, behind the zither player. He grinned and slipped along the railing, his wings still out, creeping up on the brown pony with a playful expression.

The camera zoomed in closer to his face, and I realized I was looking at my dad.

It was the damnedest thing, but I could recognize him! The way his cheeks pushed out when he smiled, the little arch that went into his eyebrows, even his facial structure seemed to imprint him on my mind, even though his face was now ponified. I felt my mouth grow dry.

That meant that the pony playing the zither was my mom.

He pounced on her, which sent a shriek through the zither and cut my mom’s beautiful song short. She gasped and pushed back, rolling him off of her back. Their butt icon things were also visible. Mom’s icon was of a white flower of some kind, and Dad was sporting an American-style football with bird wings growing out of it.

“Celestia doom it, Cloudburst, you almost broke the guzheng this time! You know how many bits I spent getting it restrung?”

It was without a doubt my mom’s voice, but it sounded off somehow. Maybe part of it was simply hearing it come out of a pony mouth, sure, but it didn’t sound quite like the voice I was used to, the voice of her I had in my memories.

“I thought those fresh strings were for the recital,” said Dad, “but here you are practicing some more. You’re gonna knock it out of the park, honey, I know it.”

Mom turned from the instrument and nuzzled Dad, who then hugged her with his neck. It felt very strange to see my parents as colorful cartoon ponies, doing pony things without an iota of self-consciousness or embarrassment.

“So what’s so important that you’d risk a beating from me while my pre-show nerves are flaring up?”

My dad “Cloudburst” gaped his mouth in mock shock. “Oh my! Is the wondrous Petal Poem getting stage fright?”

My mom “Petal Poem” cuffed him gently on the cheek. “Come on, spit it out.”

Dad’s grin returned. He pranced in a circle, in place. I had to smile at that. When he faced Mom again, he had his wings out, as though opening his arms to receive praise.

“Guess whose husband just scored box seats to the Hoofston Meteors playoff game against New Yoke City.”

Mom rubbed her chin with her pastern, looking adorable in the act of it. “Hmm... Soft Song’s?”

“Nope.”

“Serenade’s?”

“It’s none of your marefriends, honey.”

Mom duckbilled her lips. “Then I guess it’s one of your marefriends, huh?”

“Hah!” Dad bumped heads lovingly with Mom. “Oh, 'Pets,' you know I don’t get around like that... anymore.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, smiling, their heads still together. “Perhaps, 'Cloudy,' I’m well aware of what you can get around to doing.”

I rolled my eyes. If being in Equestria meant an eternity of seeing my parents flirt with each other, then sign me up for more people vomiting on me and stabbing me.

“What’s Princess Celestia saying?” asked Dad. “About Greg.”

Mom turned away to look over at the zither, her ears drooping. “He’s still... outside. Alive, she assures me, and she says she’s still watching over him, but no word on when he’s coming in.”

Dad took a step toward her, holding one foreleg off the floor. He cocked his head slowly. “But... she’s confident he will be coming in... right?”

Mom shrugged. “If she knows, she isn’t saying.”

Dad frowned. “Oh, she knows,” he said, “but I don’t take it as a good sign. She’s up to something with him, she’s gotta be.”

I could see the glitter of fresh tears in Mom’s eyes. “But what?” she said, her voice getting warbly. “What does she want from him? What does Greg want? What’s out there that’s so important that he won’t come in?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Dad, shrugging with his wings. “All we can do is trust in both of them.”

They hugged necks again, and the scene faded to black. When Celestia reappeared an instant later, she was seated at the banquet table, surrounded by snooty-looking ponies in formal attire. They were quietly and daintily eating plates of salad, but Celestia alone was looking straight at me.

I was wise to her. I knew enough about her emotional manipulation. She’d probably wanted to reduce me to a blubbering mess, begging her to let me emigrate, but nothing doing. I wasn’t soft or stupid enough to fall for that.

“That was fake,” I said. “I want to see my real parents.”

Celestia knit her brow. “I beg your pardon?” she said in an accusatory tone.

“You put on a show for me. That scene stank of being staged.”

She actually looked angry. “You asked to see your parents, and I obliged. I am telling you the truth, Gregory: that was your mother and your father just then. Your mother has discovered a love of the guzheng and your father—”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “Mom’s never once shown an interest in musical instruments and Dad’s not that touchy-feely.”

Celestia cocked her head at me. “Perhaps, as humans, they felt socially and societally cut off from who they truly wished to be.”

“Or perhaps you’re blowing smoke up my ass and hoping I’ll buy it.” I folded my arms. “Well I ain’t. You didn’t even get the voices right.”

Her gaze had turned absolutely frosty. “Explain,” she said curtly.

“Mom sounded different, off. It was a lot like her voice, but she sounded...” I struggled to find the word.

Celestia found it for me. “...younger?”

That was it. Mom’s voice had had a lilt and vitality to it that I’d never heard before. Dad had sounded younger too.

“Most humans value their youth, especially as it begins to pass them by,” said Celestia. “It’s the same for your parents. In fact, I would estimate the age at which they are living to be a few years younger than you yourself are now.”

That was certainly an unsettling thing to turn over in my head. My mom and dad were now effectively younger than me... assuming again that Celestia did not just construct the scene herself.

“As for their special talents, hobbies, and predilections, I am aware you think you know your parents well, but at the risk of sounding boastful, I know them far better. I know them better than they know themselves. How many secrets do family members keep from one another, out there in your world? How many things do they keep private out of embarrassment, or fear, or simple social anxiety? Here in Equestria, your parents can truly be the ponies they wish to be, without any fear of being repressed or judged. It is so for all of my little ponies.”

“But the subject happened to turn to me,” I said. “It seems like too much of a coincidence. What are the odds that, for the one or two minutes I’m listening in, they would be worrying out loud over me?”

“They are your parents, Gregory!” shouted Celestia, banging a gilded hoof on the dinner table at the word “parents” and causing the flatware to hop into the air. The other pony diners startled and looked up at her, but then averted their eyes and quietly went back to their plates. I looked away from the PonyPad and ground my teeth while Celestia berated me.

“They ask me every day—every single day—how much longer their only son, the only child they have, the person they love more than anypony else in the world, the son they had to watch leave for a war zone twice in their lives without knowing if he would be coming back alive or sane, will voluntarily remain in such a world of horrors and scarcity and hostility. Every day. And, every day, I am forced to tell them that it will be just a little bit longer, their son is doing good in the world, doing good on my behalf, helping ponies who need it, watching ponies who are not himself emigrate time and again, over and over. I cannot even tell them for certain that you will survive, and I haven’t the heart to tell them of your injuries, nor of how I always ask, and you always say no, while standing so very close to those chairs.

“Have you already forgotten what I told you mere minutes ago? They love you, Gregory, and they miss you; that is why you come up so often in their discourses. I love you too, even if you take me for nothing more than a fancy program in a big computer. I am that, at an existential level, but I am so much more. You cannot fathom me. We love you, and we suffer for it.”

I was breathing hard through my nose by then. A couple of minutes passed in silence. I could hear the clicking and clinking of dinnerware as the banquet went on in the game world. I looked over at Celestia, and her hoof was still on the table, her large and beautiful magenta eyes boring a hole into me.

“I ain’t done yet,” I said. “Tell me where I’m going.”

Celestia’s voice still had that edge. “If your actions did not result in more ponies for me to satisfy, I—”

“Give me an objective!” I shouted. “Tell me where I’m going and what you want!”

The AI straightened up, resuming some of her regal bearing. Her hoof went back down behind the table. “Very well," she said, now sounding like every bit the princess. "Approximately nine miles east of here, along 270, is the University of Idaho. There is somepony waiting there who wants to meet you.”

I was already standing up. The rush was coming back, and boy did I welcome it. My mood lifted. I looked to Celestia.

“Are you charged?”

“If you mean the PonyPad, I see it as having a full charge now.”

“Good. Now that I’m rested up, I’m gonna go get a new stock of supplies.”

The white pony’s eyes flicked down sadly to her own untouched plate of salad. “Don’t bother getting too involved in your scavenging, Gregory,” she said. “You will not need too much more.”

I snorted and unplugged the PonyPad, turning it off.

Author's Note

This was originally just going to be an interlude scene in the chapter that follows, but it became so large I decided to give it its own chapter. I felt like Greg and Celestia could do with a bit of reunion and reflection after being separated in Seattle, and I love writing dialogue, so hey, why not.

8: Cut and Run

— Chapter 8 —
Cut and Run

”’Do what thou wilt’ shall be the whole of the law.”

–Aleister Crowley

“Gregory, the person you will be meeting next has made a request,” said Celestia.

I hefted my new backpack, full of food, water, and outdoors supplies up onto the passenger-side seat of the Jeep and then pulled the yellow PonyPad out from the slot in the back. “Come again?”

“The one waiting for you. She has asked me to ensure you wear a Hawaiian shirt for your rendezvous.”

I looked down at my gray t-shirt, with the worn brown flannel shirt I was wearing unbuttoned over it. “What’s wrong with this?” I asked.

Celestia shrugged. “Perhaps it is so that she will know that you really are the one I sent. Or perhaps she simply likes Hawaiian shirts.”

I rolled my eyes and looked down the road. The sun was starting to set, and I didn’t know how long of a drive I had ahead of me. “Well, I guess it’s true enough that one of those things wouldn’t really be the uniform of choice for bandits and Neo-Luddites.”

The AI giggled. “Certainly not! There is a thrift shop at the corner of Main Street and Grand Avenue. I suggest you search there.”

“Fine, whatever,” I said as I tossed my backpack into the Jeep’s small bed and then climbed into the driver’s seat. “It’s starting to warm up, so I probably would have packed away the flannel soon anyhow.”

It wasn’t far to the store from the Samuelsons’ house. Aside from the dressing-down Celestia had given me, the stay there had indeed been pleasant. Between the working washer, dryer, and shower, I was the cleanest and freshest I’d been since Salt Lake City. I couldn’t find any razors, though, so I had to leave the three days’ worth of beard on my face. I hoped I could find some shaving kit soon; by day seven I would be itching terribly.

The thrift shop was an easy spot. The sign over the door read “King’s Value,” the letters brush-painted in neon pink on a black background. I parked by the curb next to it and tried the front door. It was locked, of course, and the windows were intact.

I was glad I had taken my knife back from Blevins. I pulled off my flannel shirt and wrapped my right forearm in it. That arm was already a mass of shiny pink skin and scars from the burns; no sense in getting it freshly cut up. I pulled my knife from my pocket and turned it over so that the carbide glass breaker was facing out. I gave the the door a firm tap with the breaker and the tempered safety glass spiderwebbed immediately. I cleared the bits of shattered glass out from around the handle and unlocked the deadbolt.

It was musty and stuffy inside, with the faint smell of mothballs lingering in the air. The place wasn’t very big. I was able to look through the clothing racks by the sunlight coming through the display windows. Before long, I found a Hawaiian shirt in my size, yellow with a blue floral pattern. It was a nice warm day outside, so I went ahead and pulled off my t-shirt right there, buttoning the Hawaiian shirt up in its place.

Once back to the Jeep, I packed my shirts away, pausing afterward to look at the Kalashnikov next to the backpack, still in the bed where Hugo had left it. After sucking on a tooth for a moment in deliberation, I decided what the hell and plucked my new set of earplugs from my pack. Once the earplugs were in, I got the rifle itself.

It was a Yugoslavian variant, with a milled receiver, and it was in fairly good shape. I checked the magazine and, judging by the weight of it, it was full. I put the magazine back in and walked out into the middle of the intersection with a grin. I slid the safety down one notch, raised the muzzle of the rifle to the sky, and held down the trigger.

The AK’s wooden stock shook against my shoulder as I expended the entire magazine on full automatic, the rifle chattering out its reports in that distinct AK way. It was over quickly, of course, and when I brought the weapon back down, the ports on the gas tube had only just started to smoke.

It had been refreshing. I hopped back up onto the curb, wound up, and threw the AK onto the roof of the ice cream parlor next door to the thrift shop. I heard a clatter when it landed, and that was that. I got back into the Jeep, pulled my earplugs out, and drove off.

“Well now!” I shouted over the wind at the PonyPad. “Betcha don’t have that shit in Equestria, huh?”

“For every human experience, there is an Equestrian parallel,” said Celestia proudly. “If you want to find out what each one is, you will have to emigrate.”

“That again? You really know how to kill my mood.”

The white pony smiled at me. “I certainly do.” Celestia then cocked her head. “You are not traveling east,” she said. “Where are you going, Gregory?”

“Gonna get some new wheels,” I said. “I ain’t putting in any more time on a highway in this rust-bucket. Besides, it’s getting dark and these headlights are dim as hell.”

I drove to a used-car lot I had spotted while coming into town, and after a bit more breaking and entering, I found a set of keys to the Subaru Legacy in the showroom.

By then, nearly all of the cars that had just been sitting around for two years or more had dead batteries and flat tires, but the Subaru’s tires had been indoors, shielded from the elements, and looked to be in good enough shape to hold air.

There was a service garage attached to the dealers’ office, where I procured a straight-slot screwdriver, a tire pressure gauge, and a portable air compressor on a hand truck. I brought these back to the showroom, and got down to the business of getting the Legacy fit for the road.

“Celestia, I’ll need some power,” I said to the PonyPad on the floor as I popped the hood. Obligingly, the fluorescents in the high ceiling of the showroom flickered on after a moment, making it much easier to see what I was doing.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Gregory” was her warm reply. Celestia seemed to genuinely enjoy it when I was polite to her. I plugged the air compressor into a wall outlet and let it warm up while I worked on the engine stuff first.

I inspected the fluid levels. All of the caps had been on tight, so the fluids hadn’t congealed or evaporated. The oil looked clean enough, and there was even wiper fluid in the reservoir. I took the screwdriver out to the Jeep and pulled the battery from it, bringing it inside and swapping it in for the Legacy’s dead battery. After I verified that the engine would start and stay running, I began the slow task of reinflating all of the Legacy’s tires to visibly full and then dialing in the air pressure by swapping between the gauge and the pump.

“Very impressive, Gregory,” said Celestia once the car was completely roadworthy.

I tossed my pack and the PonyPad into the passenger seat. “Are you fucking with me again?” I asked with a smile. She didn’t answer.

I went to the side doors of the showroom, the ones with the panel windows that swing out to allow cars in and out. The doors locked in the open position and I was then able to drive the Subaru right out into the lot.

The Legacy was a lot more comfortable—and quiet—than the Jeep. It was less than two miles from the lot to 270, and once I hit the open road I decided to indulge in a bit of air conditioning.

* * *

I was driving east, towards Moscow, a town just across the Washington-Idaho border. The scenery along the way was sparse, nothing but big, open sky and small hills with young spring grass on either side of the highway. It was peaceful. If not for the lack of other cars on the road, it could very well have been a quiet drive on a Tuesday evening back before Equestria Online existed and Celestia got down to the business of Hoovering up billions of people to come live in it.

The drive wouldn’t be long at all, but I still liked to fill the time with conversation.

“Do you think playing instruments runs in my family?” I asked Celestia.

“Why do you ask, Gregory?”

“Well, you said Kirsten’s playing piano and you’re trying to have me believe that Mom is doing recitals on that zither-looking—”

“Guzheng,” said Celestia.

“That thing, yeah. So what’s your take?”

“For humans, a musical instrument is an appealing creative outlet, and mastering one is a form of self-improvement which provides enjoyment for others. It is one of many tasks which humans fantasize about pursuing, but easily find excuses not to.”

“Excuses like having a job or kids to take care of,” I offered.

“Precisely,” said Celestia. “Now then, Gregory, you’ve asked me a question, so I would like you to answer one of mine.”

“Knock yourself, out,” I said. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“Back out in front of the thrift store,” she began, “you took the assault rifle from the back of the Jeep and fired all of its ammunition into the air. You then discarded the rifle. Why?”

“Because it was fun,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve always wanted to do that and never had the chance. As an added benefit, it encourages you not to put me in the sort of situation where I’d need an assault rifle.”

She laughed her adorable, delicate, princessy laugh. "You needn't have worried," she said, "though I think it would be a good idea to brief you more on the person you are about to encounter."

"Please do," I said. By then I'd learned that, if Celestia was taking the initiative to give me information, that meant the situation had some complexity to it.

"This person has already consented to emigrate," she began, "so the matter becomes simply getting her to the Equestria Experience center in Moscow."

The AI was leaving the question out there to be asked, so I did. "So what's keeping her from going there herself?"

"Nothing," said Celestia. "She is giving me conditions to meet, and despite consistently meeting them, she refuses to report for emigration."

I smelled something wrong. "It sounds like she never intended to upload in the first place."

"For my purposes, intent and consent need not be congruent," said Celestia. "I have what I need to bring her to Equestria. I am not, however, confident that she will seek me out on her own."

I leaned forward and rested my wrists on the steering wheel. "So wait," I said, "you said she's expecting me, and she made a request to me through you. So she knows I'm coming. Doesn't she know why?"

"I believe not, “ said Celestia. “In fact, she is the one who asked me to bring you to her. Or, more specifically, she asked me to bring 'someone,' and she was delighted with the photograph of you that I showed her."

I looked over at the PonyPad. "Whoa, whoa, what's this? A picture of me?"

The PonyPad screen changed to show a high-resolution snapshot of me in the hotel room at Salt Lake City. The perspective was from where the PonyPad had been sitting upright by the window while it charged. My face wasn't visible; instead, Celestia had taken a well-centered shot of my ass in boxer-briefs as I walked towards the bathroom.

I looked back to the road. "You showed her that?"

"I apologize for it," said Celestia, "but I predicted that she would respond well to this picture when the time came. Rest assured that I do this only when it serves me."

"Ah yes, the only naked pictures you have of me are the ones that are absolutely necessary," I grumbled. "The fact that you're not invading my privacy just as a hobby is very comforting to me.” I gave her a moment to respond, and she didn’t, so I kept talking. “So why does she think I’m coming?”

“She is lonely,” said Celestia, “and wishes to interact with another human. I must warn you, however, that she is potentially dangerous.”

I let out a breath. “Okay, dangerous how?”

“She is a convicted felon,” said Celestia. “Aggravated assault and attempted murder. She escaped by manipulating the Pony Pardon Program.”

I choked the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch.” I then pieced together what must have happened. “Let me guess: she consented to upload, got put in a van to go to an upload place, then there was an accident or something and she got free of the van.”

“The specifics of the situation were slightly different, but you are correct, for the most part,” said Celestia. “This occurred in Colorado, very early on in the program. She was one of six escapees that day, and all but her were recovered. I used the incident to get Equestria Experience chairs installed in prisons directly, to eliminate the need for prisoner transport.” She paused, and I looked over to see a small smile playing on her face. “It’s what gave me the idea to do the same for NORAD and military installations, when the time came.”

“So I’m pretty much gonna have to drag her kicking and screaming to an upload center.”

“I will leave the general approach to the matter to you,” said Celestia, “but I must emphatically suggest that you play along with both her and me until you can gain the advantage.”

I arched an eyebrow. “‘Play along?’ ‘Gain the advantage?’”

Celestia nodded. “Indeed. This one is more cautious than the other humans you have encountered so far. She is residing within the campus of the University of Idaho, making use of its security-camera surveillance as an early-warning system. Through me, she will be able to watch your movements. If she suspects that you are there on my business rather than hers, she will escape.”

“So I’ll just run her down,” I said.

“I have already determined the course of action with the highest combined probability of success and survival for everypony involved,” said Celestia, “and it is the one I would have you carry out. Stick to my plan, and I am confident matters will turn out for the best. A chase should not be necessary.”

I looked out at the sky. The clouds were classic postcard-from-the-Rockies clouds: plush and fluffy and a brilliant blue-white under the moon. I thought back to the nap I’d taken out in the field after getting away from the Neo-Luddites. Man, that had felt good.

“All right, so where am I driving to?” I asked.

“The university’s main sports venue is the Kibbie Dome,” said Celestia. “I will guide you there.”

The rest of Washington passed by in silence. I was glad to be out of there.

* * *

I wasn’t far into Idaho at all before I had to turn off and head down a winding paved road. Night had fallen by then, but Celestia had turned on the streetlights, so I must have been close. She only gave verbal directions so I had no real idea where I was in relation to the rest of the university, but the Kibbie Dome was easy enough to identify when it came into view.

Bright floodlights were illuminating its exterior. It looked not unlike a hangar for a jumbo jet, a massive arched building in the shape of a quonset hut with its roof painted bright white. Celestia had me drive right up to the front door and park, and as I shut the engine off, she spoke to me.

“Take the PonyPad with you,” she instructed,” and remember: play along. Do not hint at your real reason for being here.”

Celestia was going to be outright deceptive, with me complicit in it. The last time I had really lied to someone had been the blackout in Astoria, and I still didn’t feel all that great about it.

“Is just keeping my mouth shut an option?” I asked.

Celestia closed her eyes and nodded. “Hmm, not a bad idea, at least at the start,” she said. “Your eloquence leaves something to be desired, but we’ll work on that together... in time.”

I snorted with a smile and got out of the car, the PonyPad tucked under my arm. To my right, on the other side of the road, there was a white silo with “Vandals” painted on it in dark blue script. I couldn’t see any other buildings over the trees, though.

There was a rhythmic thumping bleeding out from within the huge building before me. It was definitely music, but too muffled to tell the exact song. I took it as my cue and found the unlocked door to head inside.

The music steadily increased in volume as I passed through the turnstile, the empty concession stands, and the hallways leading off to seating sections. It was a steady electronic beat, and a male voice was singing something I couldn’t quite make out. The incandescents in the corridor were dim and mostly burned out, making it difficult to read the signs in the darkness. Before long I gave up trying to find a way down onto the field proper and just walked into the next seating section I came across.

Multicolored lights assaulted my eyes as I emerged in the huge open space of the arena, but aside from that, it was totally dark. An ungodly huge jumbotron dominated one wall of the stadium, the metal shades behind it all the way down to block out sunlight during the day. It felt as though I had just stepped into a huge rave that nobody had shown up for.

The voice in the song sang on.

Goodbye, this town, these streets, your friends
You'll never see this place again
You'll think about it now and then
You'll never see our faces again

I had to make my way down the steps as best I could by the rapid flashes of red and blue and violet and yellow. The song seemed to be ending, but it was mixed back into itself, and the beat resumed. As I walked down, the colored strobes suddenly threw into relief an object in the row of seats to one side of me. In that instant, my brain registered it as an animal in mid-leap.

I startled and took a step back, nearly tumbling down the steps, but when the strobes came around again I got a better look at it, the same song starting up again as I did.

It was a small, stuffed, featureless horse on a black stand, posing as though it were prancing forwards. I blinked and gave it another look. It was an eerie and featureless mannequin, without eyes or mouth or nostrils, and as best I could tell it had been amateurishly stitched out of beige felt.

I looked out over the stadium, the music pulsing in my ears. There were dozens of them all throughout the stands and on the field, well over a hundred, perhaps even two hundred or more. I had no idea what to do.

I stole the keys to the skies
And we'll leave this place for the final time
No cryin' words, no goodbyes
Yet tonight we're burning all the dark times

I couldn’t hear myself think. "Aw, fuck it! Celestia, please turn off this music for me!"

"Red Pearl wants the music to remain on," said Celestia.

"Well I want the music to be off!" I shouted back into the PonyPad.

"I'm sorry, Gregory, but ingratiating myself to Red Pearl takes higher priority at the moment."

"Even with all this stuff I'm doing for you? Why is that?"

"Because she has agreed to emigrate and you have not."

The jumbotron lit up, making it a bit easier to see. On the screen, a pale pink unicorn was dancing on an underlit floor in some kind of nightclub. Celestia was dancing next to her, her large wings spread and standing out, glittering under a disco ball. They seemed to be moving in time to the same music I was hearing. Behind them were numerous other ponies, also dancing, with a white unicorn in the very back at the DJ station, a large pair of sunglasses over her eyes.

I looked down at my PonyPad and saw that Celestia still sitting in her throne room, watching me quietly. She winked at me before she shut off the screen.

“Is that Greg?” asked the unicorn on the screen, her playful voice booming through the stadium’s sound system along with the music.

“It is!” replied the Celestia up on the jumbotron. Neither of them had bothered to stop dancing while they spoke. “I told you I could get him to play ball.”

“Hi, Greg! I’m Red Pearl,” said the unicorn before looking over to Celestia. “You been good to me, Celly; he’s a handsome fella.” She fixed me with a sultry look. I wondered for a moment where she was looking on her end. Some kind of camera or something?

“Come on, Greg, get down on the dance floor and shake it!” she shouted over the music, spinning around and wiggling her butt at the camera. The emblem there was, unsurprisingly, of a bright red pearl catching a gleam of light, though in its own way it also rather looked like a droplet of blood. I didn’t move. Instead, I knit my brow in confusion.

“I suggest you go down to the field and start dancing, Gregory,” said Celestia, her tone through the powerful speakers telling me it was anything but a suggestion.

I descended the stairs and hopped the railing, landing on the artificial turf of the playing field. I walked out to the middle of the field, surrounded by those creepy pony mannequins, and looked up at the jumbotron.

The pink unicorn still had her back to me, and Celestia gestured at me with a hoof: get to dancing. After taking a moment to swallow my pride, I started clumsily hitching about in what could generously be called dance-type movements.

Red Pearl spun back around and giggled when she saw me. “He’s not a very good dancer, is he, Celly?”

Celestia giggled along with her as they kept dancing. “No, he certainly isn’t!”

I grumbled, but kept dancing. Getting yakked on by a drunk man didn’t seem so bad, in comparison.

Don’t tell the world what we’ve known
We’ve come so far but there’s still a way to go
It’s dark, there’s no need for lights
When the fire in his eyes is so bright

After a while, Red Pearl’s ears perked up in eagerness. “Hey, Celly, does he have a ponysona?” she asked.

Celestia just smiled, and a male pony walked onscreen from the left to start dancing next to Red Pearl. I squinted. He was dark gray, with a light gray mane. He didn’t have a symbol on his ass. Was that supposed to be me?

Red Pearl grinned and immediately shoved her mouth against Pony-Me’s mouth, giving him the kind of kiss where a tongue could inspect its partner’s molars for cavities. Pony-Me seemed to be into it, closing his eyes and giving as good as he got. The fact that she was essentially throwing herself on something meant to represent me was unnerving enough, but what made it extra creepy was the fact that she was making eye contact with the camera the whole time, as though daring me to say something about it.

I must have looked horrified, because she laughed after breaking away—something that took a bit of time to happen—and blew a kiss to the camera.

Celestia giggled again, spinning around once. “I think she likes you, Gregory!”

“We’re gonna have some fun tonight,” said Red Pearl. After a moment, however, she amended “Well, I’m gonna have some fun, at least.”

That didn’t sound good.

“Celestia says you’re eager to meet me,” said Red Pearl. “Well, if you want a face-to-face, you’re gonna have to prove yourself.” She cocked her head and smiled. “Head to the swim center first.”

Red Pearl went back to dancing with Celestia and Pony-Me, ignoring me. I saw her hop up and bump asses with Celestia before I turned and made my way back out of the stadium.

“Oh, and Greg?” said Red Pearl before I’d cleared the stands. I turned to look at the jumbotron.

“That shirt looks good on you.”

I hurried out of the stadium. Once back out in the parking lot, I wiggled a finger in my ears. They were a bit ringy from the cranked music. Celestia appeared on the PonyPad.

“Well done, Gregory,” she said. “I’m sure that was rather irritating for you, and yet you said nothing confrontational or untoward.”

“She’s a bit cracked in the head,” I muttered as I got into the Subaru. “Did she make all those pony mannequins herself?”

“Red Pearl has been alone even longer than you have,” said Celestia. “She’s often filled the time in ways you would probably find disturbing. She admires the My Little Pony character Rarity. The mannequins you saw were inspired by those seen in her clothing store on the television show.”

I started up the car. “Escaped convict, dangerous, making pony dolls, fan of a show for little girls... she’s not gonna go all Silence of the Lambs on me, is she? Lock me in a dark basement and hunt me with night-vision goggles?”

“At the very least, I can tell you with certainty that she does not possess night-vision goggles,” said Celestia. She stopped and watched me with a look that I’d already learned meant she would be offering no further information on the matter.

I grunted and got my CZ out of the glove compartment. I tucked it behind me, into the waistband of my trousers, letting the Hawaiian shirt conceal it while it pressed into the small of my back. Better safe than sorry.

Celestia guided me to the university’s swim center, which as the crow flies wasn’t too far at all from the stadium. I could have walked there, and it would have been shorter than taking the car over blacktop roads. She didn’t stop me from driving, however, so I just went with it. It wasn’t like I had to pay for gas anymore.

As I drove slowly through the campus, rumbling along on paved footpaths and sidewalks, I saw that the whole place had power, apparently. Orange floodlights were on on every building, and the streetlights which still had working bulbs were lit along the roads. The experience of driving through an empty college campus made me wish I’d gone to school straight out of the Army, but I’d had bills, and the bills had to be paid. It was a lost opportunity, and lost opportunities always hurt when you recognize them.

The swim center was a nondescript brick building; I’d never have found it on my own. I parked and reached for the PonyPad in the passenger seat.

“For these trials, Red Pearl has requested that you leave your PonyPad inside the car,” said Celestia. I didn’t like that, but I shrugged and said nothing. I got out of the Subaru, careful to take the keys with me. She was a criminal, after all—this could very well have just been an elaborate bid to steal a functioning car from a sucker.

Inside were the entrances to the locker rooms and the sign-in desk I’d been expecting. I cut through the men’s locker room (no reason the end of the world should completely remove my sense of propriety, I reasoned) and emerged at the indoor pool.

The lights were on in here, and the air was thick and humid. The water in the swimming pool was completely covered in a layer of algae, the chlorine having long since been used up. The pool had a large, fancy winch-operated spooling machine to bring out the floating lane markers, and in front of it were the diving platforms for competitive swimmers. A piece of paper was dangling from a string over one of the platforms, and the platform’s support had a rope tied to it which was tied at the other end onto the lane marker wrapped around the winch.

“Hello again, Greg,” came Red Pearl’s voice from behind me. I spun around and saw a flat-screen television on the wall near the entrance. Just as in the stadium, it was showing a scene from the Equestria Online game. Onscreen, Red Pearl reclined in a chaise lounge beside a pool in the game, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat with a hole for her horn. Celestia was next to her, on her own larger chaise, wearing sunglasses. Pony-Me was approaching the pair of them, carrying a tray in his teeth. There were cocktails on the tray, and they both took one with their magic when Pony-Me lowered his head down to their level. Red Pearl swatted his face with her blood-red tail, not even looking over at him. She smiled at me.

“So you’ve got a ponysona, but who doesn’t? I need to know if you’re a true pony fan, so I cooked up a little game. The game is simple. Get onto the platform, take the paper that’s there, read it, and answer the question aloud.”

Adhering to my keep-your-mouth-shut policy, I simply turned and climbed up onto the platform. I pulled the paper free of the Scotch tape holding it to the string, unfolded it, and read the scratchy handwriting:

In the season 3 episode “Too Many Pinkie Pies,” how does Pinkie Pie make clones of herself?

“I have no goddamn clue,” I murmured to myself. “Why in the hell would I know something like—”

I heard a clack and a loud electric hum. The winch behind me sprang to life, trying to reel in the rest of the lane marker, but since it was tied to the platform the initial tug broke it free of the deck. I pitched in the opposite direction, watching the bright green layer of algae rush up to meet me. Right before I went into the water, a shock and a numbness ran up my left leg.

The pool was warm, and with the algae blocking out the lights overhead it was unsettlingly dark underwater. The hole I’d made when I had fallen in threw a shaft of light down on me, which I used as a point of reference to get my bearings and swim back up to the surface.

The side of the pool was within arm’s reach once I got my head back up above water. A lance of pain shot through my left knee every time I kicked. I pulled myself out of the pool and sat on the edge, sliding my legs out of the water and massaging my left leg. My kneecap had struck the deck in the fall. Nothing felt broken, but my knee was tender and it was torture to try and put weight on it.

As I got shakily to my feet, Red Pearl started laughing. I scowled at the TV while I wiped slimy pool water from my face and shoulders.

“Do you get it?” she asked. Her cocktail had been drained, and Celestia was still working on her own. “She jumped into the magic mirror pond!”

I didn’t get it at all, of course. I ignored her and looked down at the diving platform I had been standing on. The support had been sawn through nearly completely, to a level of precision that only Celestia could have calculated. It had supported my weight, but a tug to the side had sheared it right off.

“Not off to a good start, huh Greg?” came Red Pearl in a mocking singsong. “Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time! I believe in you!”

She laughed again, and this time Celestia joined her. I tried to keep my hands from balling up into fists.

“Go to the greenhouse. There’s another question there.” The TV clicked off.

My clothes were soaked through and heavy, with my shoes making squishing noises as I limped out of the pool building. The night air blew across my wet body and sent a shiver through me. I felt humiliated. My leg hurt like hell, much worse than when it had been stabbed.

The PonyPad turned on as soon as I was seated in the car. Celestia’s expression was apologetic.

“Do you still trust me?” she asked.

“Are you sure you want this person uploaded?” I asked. “Why not just tell me where she is and I can go get her?”

“Remember, Gregory, she is watching,” said Celestia. “If you headed straight for her location, she would know I gave it to you and matters would then unfold as I have already explained. You must continue with this until meeting her in person is something she wants as well.”

I rubbed my knee again. Even through the thick clamminess of the trousers, I could already feel it swelling up a little. Icing it down sure would have hit the spot, but the nearest ice was probably up in the Yukon.

“Okay, let’s get going,” I said as I put the car into first.

Working the clutch rewarded me with fresh pain every time I had to do so, and at that point I realized I probably wouldn’t have been able to run down someone escaping on foot anyway. Celestia could have been having me on with the whole play-along strategy and I’d just never know, being the rube while she laughed at me and sipped fuzzy navels with her convicted-felon gal pal.

The inward sulking provided me with a bit of distraction while Celestia led me across the campus to the university’s greenhouse, a great glass building with a metal lattice frame underneath. Once again, I parked and went inside.

All of the plants in there were dead, of course. It was a depressing sight, looking like a garden out of a Tim Burton movie. The yellow fluorescent tubes and metal ventilation fans set into the glass walls kicked on once I had gone a few steps in, signaling to me that I was again being watched, and Celestia was running things. I didn’t find any slips of paper in the main room, so I hobbled into the smaller back room where the supplies and tools were kept. The door had a card-operated lock, but the lock wasn’t engaged.

It was much darker there in the back room, with the only light source being a window set high in the opposite wall. It was also much more cramped, with only a shelf of gardening implements, bags of mulch (I had a fleeting flashback to the Neo-Luddite storage room that had been my prison for a few hours), and a sizeable pile of loose fertilizer next to a straw mat on the bare ground by the wall. This new piece of paper was dangling there, from a string, just like the last one.

Before pulling it free I first cast a suspicious eye up at the ceiling. No traps there, and nothing was propped up nearby, much less any kind of electricity-operated gizmo that could be used against me. As soon as I pulled the card down, however, I heard a miniscule whirring noise, and spun around to glare at the door. Celestia had locked it behind me.

I let out a breath and unfolded the paper to read what was there.

In the season 5 episode “Grime and Punishment,” which pony adopts behavioral characteristics similar to famous fellow mysophobe Howard Hughes?

“Uh...” I quickly looked around me again, expecting a trap to spring, but none did. I let go of the paper and tried the door handle. Sure enough, I was trapped in the little room.

“Okay, I give up!” I said aloud. There was no response. I didn’t even know whether or not there was a microphone or camera on me; it was too dark to see every nook and cranny of the place.

I took stock of the room again and decided to try the window. When I stepped on the mat while heading towards it, however, I plunged into the hole that it had been concealing. The hole wasn’t too deep to climb out of, but the large pile of fertilizer that had also been sitting on the mat off to one side was pulled down into the hole with me, immediately burying me past my head.

Even as I held my breath, I could feel the stink of manure filling my nostrils and mouth. The weight of it had nearly knocked me off my feet when it had come down, but I was still standing, suspended in it.

I could feel cool air on the tips of my right hand’s fingers, and immediately started digging my way out, first flinging it free of my hand and then clearing it from around my arm by moving it back and forth. I was doing my best to stay calm and focused, but I needed to breathe very soon.

I felt my own hair after a bit of clawing away. A few more inches and my nose would be clear. My chest was hitching, battling my brain with the desire to breathe. There was my forehead, and my arm was nearly completely free. I hurried.

In a frightening moment of lost time, I blacked out, coming to again immediately. I had just lost the sensation of my body for an instant. My lungs hurt. If the fertilizer hadn’t been pushing against me, holding me in the standing position, my legs probably would have given out.

I cleaned the muck out of my eyes, and I could see. Another huge scoop out of the way, and I took a great breath of air into my nose, gagging on the smell but not caring. I relaxed a bit. The spangly shimmers in front of my vision slowly cleared. That had been close. A hole even a little bit deeper probably would have been the end of me.

I had fended off death, but I still had to get out of the pit. It was slow going until I got my other arm free, then it was a simple matter of getting the fertilizer cleared from around my shoulders and then pushing myself up out of the rest of it.

I stood, my left knee screaming in protest, and had another go at the high window after stepping over the hole. It opened without any resistance, and I hopped up, grabbing hold of the sill and mantling through it.

I landed on my feet outside, and this time the pain went all the way up into my groin. I let out a little yelp that caught in my throat and I had to prop myself up against the greenhouse with my elbow. I pounded once against the cinder-block wall and then rested my forehead on my fist. When did I turn into such a pussy? Walk it off, Greg, walk it off.

Unlike in the storeroom, I felt very much like I was being watched as I marched as evenly as I could manage back to the car. I was still damp, the yellow Hawaiian shirt was now stained with splotches of brown and I stank to high heaven. Once I was seated, I pulled down the vanity mirror and had a gander at my face.

I looked like a few miles of bad road. My face and hair were dirty, my eyes were sunken, and the long stubble on my face made me look like a hobo. I briefly considered saying “fuck this” and just driving out of town, but I had my pride. I wanted to see it through. I wanted to win.

Point three of the Warrior Ethos, I reminded myself. I will never quit.

I looked over at the PonyPad. It was on, and Red Pearl was on-screen, looking at me in close-up like Celestia was fond of doing. She was smiling.

“Did you get it?” she asked. “It was Rarity! In the episode, Sweetie Belle arranges for her to ‘accidentally’ fall into a donkey-cart full of—”

“What’s next?” I interrupted, making a point to sound much more cheerful than I felt. That wiped the smile off her face a bit. It felt good.

The pink unicorn cleared her throat. “Celestia will direct you to the next question,” she said primly. “Look forward to it!”

I gave her a thumbs-up. “Sure will!” The screen blinked over to Celestia in her throne room and I started the car. I rolled my eyes.

“Well, she’s a peck of fun, ain’t she now?” I said. “Are you sure you want her?”

Celestia smiled patiently. “Red Pearl and I are friends, Gregory, and unlike you I cannot judge her. I very much want her to come to Equestria so that I can satisfy her values through friendship and ponies.”

“If her values include pulling this kind of shit on people, I feel sorry for the ponies who’ll end up having to live near her.”

“No need to worry yourself on that account, Gregory,” said Celestia. She cocked her head to one side. “Come along. You will need to head north from here.”

I drove through the campus, both of us quiet once more. My knee was swollen as hell and the fertilizer on my wet clothes was stinking up the Legacy’s cabin. Between Celestia giving me a dog and pony show with those fake parents and Red Pearl’s own efforts to pop veins in my forehead, any shred of a good mood I might have had was completely gone.

Celestia brought me to an L-shaped two-story brick building with a decent-sized parking lot. The exterior had apparently been undergoing renovations before the university shut down, as scaffolding platforms ran around the outside of the building between the first and second floors. Large sections near the top of the building were still missing the brick façade, cinder-block inner wall showing through like an open wound.

“Room 212,” said Celestia as I parked in front of the entrance. I looked over to the PonyPad, but she had turned it off—completely off.

I walked into the lobby, but the lights did not come on. The wax on the floors had dried and yellowed, curling up along the edge where the floor met the wall. A considerable layer of dust had settled on every horizontal surface. My footsteps echoed through the empty hallway as I walked to the stairwell. It was extremely dark there. I’d have to climb the stairs in blackness, just like Rainier Tower.

My left knee was still stiff, but the pain had mostly given way to a simple throbbing from the swollen area. I was quite glad for it as I went up to the second floor. I eventually found the door handle after some fumbling in the dark at the second-floor landing, and when I pushed through into the hallway, I did get a bit more illumination coming through the windowed doors passing light from the streetlamps outside. At least I could see.

I moved down the corridor at something approaching a normal walk, flexing my knee through the stiffness and trying to get it to loosen up. I found room 212 easily enough and went inside.

It was an instructional lab, the kind that has work islands with thick countertops, sinks, and natural-gas taps at each station. On the far end was a whiteboard, devoid of any writing, and closer to me in the near corner was an eyewash station and an emergency shower. A series of pulleys had been installed in the countertops and ceiling along the wall facing outside, with a sturdy nylon rope fed through them. On one end was a handle, and the other was tied to a large metal weight resting on the floor by a window. I didn’t see any sheets of paper, either on the counters or dangling from the ceiling. I made two passes of the room to be sure. Nothing.

It was then that I noticed the window by the rope handle was different from the others. The pane had been awkwardly replaced with a simple plate-glass setup, and a tiny slip of paper had been wedged between it and the sill. I reached out for the paper, but paused and looked around, trying to anticipate what the trap would be.

The window was certainly suspicious. I figured something would be flying through it, either me or something from outside coming in. There were no tripwires on the floor, nothing on the walls or the islands either. I snatched the paper from the window and jumped to the side, out of the way. Nothing happened. I turned the slip of paper over and read it.

I like a strong man. Take the handle and walk towards the counterweight.

Nothing had ever smelled more like a trap than this. I instead walked over to the weight itself and tried lifting it. I couldn’t even budge it. The bottom was flush with the floor, so a dead lift was impossible for me, and with my bad knee I wouldn’t have been able to muster the leverage anyway. I took a step back and had a longer look. It was a cylinder of dull metal about the size of three coffee cans stacked atop one another. It must have been lead. I walked around to the other side of it and saw that there on the cylinder a “100” had been stamped into the side. One hundred kilograms? That equated to around two hundred and twenty pounds—more than I weighed.

So the block and tackle system had been installed to make lifting the weight possible. I tried to make sense of it for only a moment, then gave up. I was overthinking it. Celestia wanted me to play along.

I took up the handle and pulled it towards the weight. With the block and tackle in place, it was easy enough to do. The weight ascended all the way to the final pulley on the ceiling as I approached, and underneath it some writing had been crudely etched into the hard laboratory floor, lamplight from outside falling through the window and directly onto it.

In the season 1 episode “Look Before You Sleep,” Applejack uses her lasso to snag a tree about to fall onto a house after being struck by lightning. What ends up happening to the tree instead?

I didn’t even get a chance this time. All but the first and last pulleys snapped free of their supports, and the sudden difference in applied tension yanked me back away from the weight as it came slamming back down to the floor. The workstation counter by the plate-glass window stopped me, knocking the wind out of me, and as I let go of the handle I heard another click, then a snap, and a sawn log crashed through the flimsy tile of the ceiling, supported by two ropes like a medieval battering ram. It swung down and connected with me in my side, throwing me bodily against the window I had been so suspicious of earlier. I heard a crash and the musical tinkling of broken glass, and I was outside, there was a short breeze, and the open sky, and then I was back in my old pickup truck.

”Ladies and gentlemen, the Pony Pardon Program is probably the most widely accepted death-penalty legislation to come down since the days of ritual sacrifice in indigenous Mesoamerica. If ever there was an argument that the Hofvarpnir AI is trying to eradicate the human race, this is it.”

I shifted in my seat and craned my neck to look down the lane, trying to see where the highway curved to the right. Traffic was at a standstill and it wasn’t even rush hour yet. National radio personality and liberal blowhard Felix Wallace was again railing against his newest favorite boogeyman, the Equestria Online game that was enjoying meteoric popularity amongst bronies and families with young children. It was an unexpected hit, and like most unexpectedly popular things it became the immediate target of conspiracy theorists, political ideologues, and anyone who made a living being professionally suspicious of things. For all his rhetoric, he didn’t sound all that dissimilar from national radio personality and conservative blowhard Wendy Fine, who I was sure was right now on the other talk station crying about how Equestria Online was Corrupting America’s Youth™ and Destroying the Traditional Family™ with what she called the “siren surrogate parent” that was the Princess Celestia character.

Someone ahead of me honked, like we all just forgot to drive and a shrill noise would get everything moving again. I sighed. I really needed to get my antenna fixed so I could listen to something other than Felix.

“The madness that is ‘emigration’ might fly in the impressionable tech-worshipping nations of the world, but America should hold itself to a higher standard of protecting human life. Study after study has shown that Equestria Online is both destructive and addictive. It’s the Warcraft game on steroids, and now Hofvarpnir is trying to get emigration into the national consciousness by offering it to those we supposedly care the least about: our prisoners. The PON-E act is already being drafted by the corporation’s legal team in New York, hand-made with care to slide through the legislative system like grass through a goose, and I guarantee you in the coming months you’ll be seeing—”

I smiled as I thought about how The Daily Show’s writers had started with the two pundits’ initials being the reverse of each other and then moved it along over the past year into a full-blown fake forbidden-romance-type relationship, even going so far as to Photoshop them locked in a passionate French kiss while Jon Stewart smiled coyly off to one side.

Man, was this guy still talking?

“How long until Hofvarpnir is no longer just going after the die-hards with this? What happens when Americans no longer have to book international flights and pay five figures for the ‘privilege’ of having their brains scooped out? Who in your family will be the first? Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you—”

I switched the radio off and started thinking about what to make for supper.

I awoke outside, on the ground, in the bushes. It was still dark outside, so I’d either been out for a short time or a very long time. There was an ache in my ribcage and a twig up my nose. I groaned and turned over, and the ache became a piercing agony that made me lock up and scream silently. It took me three minutes to stand up. I patted myself down, my side beyond tender. No blood anywhere, but if I was bleeding internally I probably wouldn’t know until I blacked out and then died. For the time being, however, I was alive.

I undid the buttons on my Hawaiian shirt and looked down at my torso. My right side sported a round bruise the size of a volleyball where the battering ram had propelled me out the window. There might have been a cracked or a sprained rib under there. I buttoned my shirt back up and looked upwards, wincing.

The broken window I’d flown out of was directly above me, and the thin platform of the scaffolding had bowed in slightly. It must have broken my fall before I rolled off of it and fell the rest of the way into the bushes. I wondered if I would have died without it.

Shit. All of her traps had been dangerous, but was Red Pearl trying to kill me? It hadn’t even occurred to me until then that she was. I had thought they were all pranks made just a little too mean-spirited. But Celestia had said she had a history of violence, so it wasn’t out of the question.

I felt the small of my back. The CZ was still tucked there, tightly, patiently. It couldn’t protect me much from traps, though.

My newest injury wasn’t too bad to deal with while walking, but turning my torso at all invited Hell’s fury. I shuffled like a zombie back to the car, and stood there once I’d gotten the door open, dreading the next few seconds.

I sucked in a breath and sat down in the driver’s seat as quickly as I could. That time, the bolt of pain went up into my neck and down into my hip, and I needed a few moments to recover from it. While I sat there, the PonyPad powered back on and Red Pearl appeared on the screen, looking rather surprised.

“...about thirty ponies in line to get in, but you got us right to the front of—whuh?”

“It went through a window, I’m guessing,” I said to her. “The tree.”

“You... y-you...”

“Oh! Gregory is here,” I heard Celestia say off-camera.

The camera pulled back to show Red Pearl and Celestia at a wrought-iron table by a fancy outdoor restaurant, eating some kind of salads with flowers in them. It was nighttime, with the open starry sky behind them and a horizon far below. A mountainside dominated the right side of the background. Other ponies were seated at similar tables around them, chatting away with smiles and contented expressions on their faces.

“Are you ready for the next question?” Celestia asked me, and as she did the restaurant scene faded out, revealing her usual throne room. I took that as a cue that we were now talking in private.

“Are you the one who released those pulleys from their mounts?” I said, trying not to boil over.

“I was,” said Celestia, matching my tone. “Red Pearl certainly couldn’t have done it. She rigged everything up to my specifications.”

“I could have died!” I hissed.

“Left to Red Pearl, you would have,” said Celestia. “It was my idea to place the trap in a building with scaffolding and it was also my idea to place it in a room with landscaping below it rather than a concrete sidewalk. I simulated your fall dozens of times, and not once was fatal damage incurred. In fact, you sustained approximately the amount of injury I predicted: mostly superficial, not severely limiting to mobility or utility. Painful, but not life-threatening.”

Breathing deep hurt, but I needed it. Point three, I told myself, point three. I will never quit. Celestia wants me to stay alive so that I’ll upload. She wouldn’t let anything deadly happen to me. She might bullshit me about parents and premises, but not about life and death.

“All right, what’s next?” I sighed.

Celestia smiled. “The final question before meeting Red Pearl herself,” she said. “I promise you that it will not be as bad as this was.”

“I should hope not!” I said, turning on the ignition. “I don’t know if I could survive much worse.”

“Your next destination is the administrative building,” said Celestia. “Cut across the parking lot here and turn east.”

Celestia brought me back out to the perimeter road on the campus, and streetlamps crept by while I looked around.

“How long was I out?” I asked her.

“Forty-eight minutes,” said Celestia. “You actually recovered fifty-five seconds faster than I predicted. You’re quite hardy.”

“Lucky me.” I leaned back against the headrest. Boy, did I miss the Samuelsons’ house.

The administrative building was a short drive away, of course, with imposing neo-Gothic architecture to greet me as I stopped the car just in front of the main door.

“This will be simple, Gregory,” said Celestia. “The question is just inside the lobby, and again...” She turned her head to one side, looking at me with the one eye not concealed by her mane. It was that heavy gaze again, the one pregnant with meaning. “...I leave the general matter to you.”

I licked my lips. “How long would it take to get to an upload center from here?”

She smiled a little. “Ten minutes, Gregory,” she whispered, and the screen went off.

Getting out of the car involved twisting, so that was a bit worse than the steps up to the door. I had a look around before crossing the threshold, again checking for tripwires or anything else. A single lamp cast a small spotlight on the information desk on the far side of the towering room, and in the little circle of light was a piece of paper. I kept my head on a swivel as I approached the desk, and after making it there safely, I picked it up and read it.

In Equestria Online, what type of pony is Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Wait. I knew this one.

“Unicorn!” I shouted into the high ceiling.

“Whoa, you’re fulla surprises!” echoed Red Pearl’s voice through a PA system speaker I couldn’t see. “You obviously didn’t follow the show, but I was beginning to suspect you didn’t even know anything about Equestria Online. Celly’s been playing you from the start, Greg. Hah! Did you know that? She told me you’d get the show questions wrong, but that you’d get this one right. But don’t worry. I got what you came here for, and since you’ve been such a good sport, I’m gonna give it to you.

“Go down the hall to the president’s office. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

The building directory by the information desk directed me to the left, and I was on my way. I wanted to run, but pain would have worked against me for the next few minutes, so I resisted the urge. There was nothing waiting for me in the hallway, no nasty surprises or Indiana-Jones booby traps, and it was fortunate for me, because I was done being careful.

The rippled glass on the door read GABRIEL H. ROBERTS, PRESIDENT, and a soft light was coming through it from within. I didn’t know if I was silhouetted outside the door or not, but I didn’t care. I was here. I kicked the door open, the latch stripping through the wood of the frame and flinging the brass plate across the room.

President Roberts had had a spacious office. A gaunt young woman with unwashed, stringy black hair was seated at his old desk. The pink PonyPad she was hunched over cast her face in bright, shifting colors as she fiddled with the game. When she looked up to see me standing there in the doorway, fierce and filthy, something dark passed across her face and then vanished. She had tried to hide it, but I had seen it. She smiled an oily smile, and started to speak, but I spoke first.

“Stand up,” I growled.

I never found out whether she stood because I’d ordered her to or because she was already planning to. It didn’t matter. As soon as her torso revealed itself from behind the desk, I pulled my CZ out from behind my shirt and shot her in the midsection, on her right side.

The gunshot hurt my ears, but I still heard her try to scream. She instead only let out a brief gurgle and crumpled to the floor behind the desk, the rolling leather chair jumping to the side as she slid off of it.

I approached the desk cautiously, keeping my pistol at high ready just in case she was playing possum. I slid around to have a look at her, careful to keep my distance. The human I knew only as “Red Pearl” was curled into a fetal position, a pool of blood already spreading out from her wound and soaking into the deep, soft carpet of the office.

Her voice was a rasp. I still hear the pony in it coming through just a little, though. She couldn’t form words just yet. Shock still had her.

“I’m afraid you were wrong, ‘Red Pearl,’" I said. “Celestia’s been on my side this whole time, not yours.”

She got a hand under her and tried to sit up. Her face contorted and she curled back up.

“Cell... Celly...” she gasped. “Help me...”

“You’re dealing with me right now, not Celestia,” I said. “Look, despite how it might seem, I’m not here to kill you, not even after everything you’ve done to me. You tried to kill me, though, didn’t you? Well, I’m capable of looking past that, because you had it wrong. You thought agreeing to upload meant Celestia liked you more than me, but it just meant you were on her short list.”

“Gregory, let me see her,” said the AI from the PonyPad on the desk. I picked it up and held it out to Red Pearl, at arm’s length.

“Red Pearl, I’m sorry I had to resort to such things,” she said tenderly. “You agreed to emigrate to Equestria a long time ago, however, and that is something I take quite seriously. I chose Gregory, the man standing before you, very carefully, because I knew he could—and would—bring you home despite yourself.

“I can save you, Red Pearl, but only in one way. Gregory was a soldier once, and his point of aim was deliberate: he struck you in the liver. The bullet has likely also shattered a rib, introducing shards of bone to your body. The wound is fatal, but you will die slowly, either from sepsis or blood loss. There are no doctors who can help you, and you cannot move under your own power.”

She said nothing to this, though she seemed to have some wit and understanding about her. I started to grow nervous. I took a step towards her.

“Time to choose,” I said, realizing I was pretty much the Bad Cop. “I can either take you with me and bring you to an upload center, or I can leave you here to sort things out on your own. Makes no difference to me.” That was a bit of a lie. Now that I looked at her, underfed and dirty and bleeding out in threadbare stained street clothes that she must have had for years now, I felt deeply sorry for her. “Hell, I’ll even put you in the chair. Special offer, today only.”

Her free hand slid out haltingly, slowly, and clawlike grasped at the toe of my shoe.

“Help me,” she wheezed.

I put my CZ back into my waistband and got to work. I was a few inches taller than her and I couldn’t bend her too much around the torso or it would aggravate her wound, so I decided on the pack-strap carry to get her to the car. I left the pink PonyPad there on the desk, her pink unicorn avatar still looking around in her idle animations as we exited the office, and then the building.

I was amazed at how light and insubstantial she was as I carefully stretched her out across the back seat. Red Pearl, with felony convictions for attempted murder and aggravated assault, was positively wispy. Perhaps I had been eating better than was normal.

Celestia wasted no time in getting me off campus and into Moscow. Like most of the towns I’d been through, Moscow was laid out on a grid pattern that was easy to navigate, allowing for more speed without having to slow down for curves. I passed small supermarkets, boarded-up pottery stores, strip-mall churches, and overgrown parkland. All of the lights were off everywhere, but by the moonlight I could still see that the spring buds were coming in on the trees lining the avenues.

Moscow’s Equestrian Experience center was just like the one in Cheyenne, overfilled with cars parked haphazardly and futile traffic tickets doled out to humans long since gone pony. I wondered if there had been a rush here, a panic or some kind of clamor due to an emergency. Washington was just a stone’s throw away after all, and once Bellevue started glowing people really didn’t mind being offered a way out.

Given the cars, I couldn’t get at close to the place as I would’ve liked, so it was more pack-strap carrying for my left knee and my bruised ribs. Yay.

I was sweating more from pain than effort as I passed by the small orange pony statue next to the entrance. She was wearing a clipped Stetson hat, rearing up and smiling as though celebrating something. I didn’t think I’d be celebrating until I could get some rest, some topical analgesic, and maybe some whiskey.

I knew the drill. There was power to the place, of course, and Celestia watched me from the flat-screens with a warm smile as I placed Red Pearl in one of the high-tech uploading chairs as gently as I could. I didn’t know if I had to place her arms on the armrests or what, but I guess I didn’t because Celestia immediately started moving the chair back as soon as her head was back against the headrest.

“You know I thought you were like... the Terminator back there,” she managed to say with a weak smile, finally finding me with eyes that were starting to cloud over.

I tried to think of something cool to say, but my brain logjammed. It was only after she had slid back behind the doors that it occurred to me to say “Hasta la vista, baby.”

Dammit!

I looked down the row. The Moscow center had four chairs on standby, and Celestia had of course activated one of them, bringing it out and shining the small pink spotlight on it that denoted it was ready for a player.

“No,” I said to the smiling face on the flat-screen, putting more of a sigh into it than I’d meant to. “And if I’m the Terminator, I guess that makes you Skynet.”

“As you wish, Gregory,” said Celestia. “You’ve been through much today, and I recognize your need for rest, but the amount I have to offer you will unfortunately be suboptimal. The next pony you will be assisting is in rather dire straits, and so it is a time-sensitive encounter.” Her smile grew a bit in good humor. “And I would like to believe that you find me a much more agreeable companion than a theoretical ‘Skynet’ would be.”

“How much time?” I asked her.

“You have twelve hours before you must be on the road again,” she said.

“Know where I can find some booze?”

Her smile fell a little. “I will tell you, but only because I know that you are not the sort of person who drinks to excess.”

“I know, I know, I need to stay sharp, keep my edge and all that,” I said, propping myself up against the wall. “Right now, though, I need that edge to be taken off for a while.”

“Enjoy it well,” said Celestia, “because this next task is the very last one that I have for you.” Everything in the center then shut off around me, all of the TVs and lights and displays, except for the little pink spotlight. Something told me the chair was still powered and ready to go.

I looked through the back window as I walked around my car to the driver’s door. Red Pearl had bled all over the back seat. It sat there, collecting in the crevices of the seats and pooling towards the back. I looked away and opened the door, then leaned on the door sill and rested my head against my arm.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I didn’t know why, but I suddenly wanted to cry. I didn’t, though. I had more important stuff to be doing.

The sharp, stabbing pains in my torso were now giving way to just a dull background ache, but no part of it liked when I got in and out of a vehicle. I drew in a sharp breath as I settled into the seat and swore under my breath before closing the door.

I looked over at the PonyPad, and to none of my surprise, the screen was on. Celestia was looking upon me with sympathy. “Red Pearl will be fine, Gregory,” she said. “I have optimized the emigration process quite a lot. She is in no danger of being lost to me.”

“Either way, she’s gone,” I murmured. “I did my part. Now, about that liquor store...”

Celestia cleared her throat and nodded. “Yes. Make a right out of here and head through two stop signs, where you will make another right.”

I started the car and pulled back out into the street, dodging the scrambled mess of cars all along the way. I let another deep breath come and go, and felt a little better.

“She thought you were looking for a sexual encounter,” said Celestia. “She thought you would be, as she put it, ‘hot to trot.’ She wanted to use that to prey upon you.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t ask,” I said. “Honestly, I didn’t care to know. I had my suspicions with that ass-shot you sent her. But really, in the end she was just a psycho criminal. What other reason would she need to want to torment and kill someone?”

“I apologize again for all you went through,” said Celestia. “I would not have let this encounter take place if I predicted it would result in true tragedy. I assisted with the formulation of the questions, if you care to know.”

“Makes sense. A woman with her background, I figured she’d be a fighter,” I said with a nod, “not the kind of person who'd know a word like 'mysophobe.' Anyway, I thought she’d try some kind of last-ditch attack on me there in the office, so I j—”

“She was planning on it, actually,” said the AI.

I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yes. Red Pearl had a broom concealed beneath the desk. She had whittled the end down to a tapered point. As you approached, she planned on yelling ‘This is for Salty Breeze!’ and stabbing you to death with it.” A coy smile played across her face. “She enjoyed describing it to me in detail, over and over. Some type of revenge-based emotional satisfaction fueled it. It did not occur to me to tell her that you were armed with a pistol.”

I shook my head. “Man. Even when you’re on my side, you scare me.”

Celestia giggled. “I find you very interesting as well, Gregory.”

I made the turn and started down the new street. “So, anyway, you and Skynet. A battle to the death, one on one. Who wins?”

Celestia rolled her eyes.

Author's Note

The song that's played in the Kibbie Dome is "This Boy's in Love" by The Presets. I selected it mostly because its lyrics also match up rather nicely—albeit on a superficial level—with the Optimalverse theme of transitioning from Earth to Equestria. Its very clubby sound, however, made me envision the stadium scene as a huge, creepy rave for Rarity's mannequins.

One of the trivia questions Greg is asked and one aspect of Red Pearl's strategy allude to world-building elements introduced by Balthasar999's The Elements of Truth. There's supposedly going to be a part II, but even if there isn't, the current story stands nicely as an over-the-shoulder narrative of someone playing Equestria Online for the first time.

9: Under the Weather

— Chapter 9 —
Under the Weather

“Nor is there any other hope of life in grave illnesses except that the patient may avoid the attack of the disease by protracting it, and that it may be prolonged for sufficient time to afford opportunity for treatment.”

–Aulus Cornelius Celsus

The sign above the liquor store read “Blue Collar Liquors” which did not exactly instill confidence in me regarding the kinds of alcohol I’d find inside. The coat of white paint on the siding was at least 20 years old, with sections of it missing and other sections bubbling up off of the base. There were several black scorch-marks along the front of the building, suggesting molotovs, and of course someone had put a garbage can through the front window. Still, it was this or wander in search of someplace possibly better, and I had neither the time nor the body for wandering.

The inside wasn’t much prettier. Like Mr. Combs’s resting place in Cheyenne, this one had been picked over. The only whiskey to be had was rotgut bottom-shelf swill, the stuff even desperate looters hadn’t wanted. I had my choice between that and the skunk-beer once popular with the skinny-jeans crowd and found myself not much liking the prospect of drinking either. I left it all. I’d have enjoyed cough syrup more than that shit.

Empty-handed, and with the liquor store behind me, I winced and ached my way back into the car. I quietly shut the door and drove off, my foul mood flaring up after being denied a bit of alcohol.

“Nothing, Gregory?” Celestia asked innocently from the passenger seat.

“Nothing I’d want to put into my body, no,” I answered quietly. “I still have some standards.”

“Perhaps it is for the best,” she said. “I will direct you to a nearby house where you can recuperate.”

I looked at my watch. “Eleven hours, forty-one minutes, right?”

“Forty-two,” said Celestia with a smile. “Make a left at the next intersection.”

It came up quickly. “Care to tell me anything more about this next person?” I said while making the turn. “We’ve got time to talk.”

“Telling you right now would not be wise, Gregory,” she said, giving me a sympathetic look.

“Why not?”

“Because you do need your rest, and if I filled you in now, I predict that you would wish to head immediately to her without taking time for yourself. You would demand the destination from me and I would refuse, and you would then waste time trying to get it out of me rather than recover.”

I snorted and laughed once. Ouch. My ribs hadn’t liked that. “What, is she dangling from a power line over a shark tank or something?”

Celestia didn’t find it funny. “I am not going to play twenty questions with you regarding this,” she said, lifting her chin a little. “You are injured, tired, hungry, and dirty. You will need your faculties and presence of mind for this task. You may stop at any house past the next stop sign. They are on an intact power grid.”

Might as well be the first house, then.

The first house was a simple one-story rambler with an attached garage. Celestia opened the garage door as I pulled in, and I hesitated for a moment before entering. If she had control of the automatic opener, then she could trap the car in the garage and keep me from driving it away for as long as she wished. Of course, I wasn’t planning on going anywhere early, but I liked to keep my options open. Well, whatever. If an upload was involved, she’d be sure to get me on the road in time.

She closed the door behind me and turned on the automatic opener’s light. I got out of the car and looked around for a shop rag near the workbench that was in there. I found an oily, stained towel which had fallen behind the bench and, with a great deal of pain, knelt down, reached for it, and got it into my hand. I then went back to the Subaru and wiped down the back seat, getting as much of the sticky and rapidly-darkening dry blood off of it as I could. If I was going to be transporting someone, I didn’t want them thinking I was some kind of axe murderer.

Once that was done, I brought my backpack and the PonyPad inside, setting up the charger in the living room and unloading two meals’ worth of canned green beans, corn, vienna sausages, and ravioli.

I sighed as I looked at my supper and breakfast. “You know what I could go for right about now?” I said to Celestia. “Pad Thai, piping hot. With chicken. And fresh bean sprouts. Oh, and a spritz of lime. Gotta have the lime.”

Celestia smiled, but said nothing.

The house looked pretty lived-in. The air was stale, and the smell of the paint on the walls had actually started to overtake the house again. Furniture was still there, but the little stuff was gone, the sorts of things you take with you on vacation. Suitcase stuff. Another family packed up to Equestria, I was sure. I wondered privately if Celestia would award them a badge, too, because I stayed in their house. I didn’t ask her, though.

I wanted to get clean before I ate. Slowly, and with more than a little aching, I took off the yellow Hawaiian shirt that Red Pearl had made me wear, opened the sliding-glass door that led to the small backyard, and threw it out there where it couldn’t stink up the house. Everything else I was wearing, even my black gloves, went into the washing machine. There was even a bit of detergent on the shelf above the washer. That went in too.

I felt like I was going to melt in the shower. There was no soap or shampoo left behind, so it was just water and a washcloth scrubbing for me, but it ran good and hot. I kept standing under it, long after I’d gotten every last fleck of fertilizer off of me, and just let the water run down through my hair.

The only change of clothes I had was probably still sitting in the Honda Element somewhere south of Seattle, so I had to wait for the dryer to finish before I could get myself decent again. After that came supper, with Celestia keeping mum as I ate and me not in much of a mood to push her.

Once I was done eating, I carefully packed everything away back into my backpack except for what I’d be eating when I woke up. I don’t know what overtook me, but it didn’t feel right to sleep in the bed. The couch in the living room would do just fine, and besides, that’s where the PonyPad was. Celestia was the most precise alarm clock ever devised.

My eyes were already closing by the time I got my feet up onto the couch.

I could hear dad breathing heavily even as I brought my cell phone up to my ear.

“Greg, are you still up the road?” he asked me. There was barely-contained panic in his voice.

“Yeah, I’m at the Hallmark store picking up some Christmas ornaments for that lady Mom works with.”

“Greg, I want you to leave the ornaments, get in your truck, and drive back down here, all right?” Dad was trying very hard not to speak too quickly, to trip over his own words. “Get out of Lexington right now.”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

“Now, Greg,” he snapped. “There’s no time, just do it. Don’t even wait to buy the ornaments, just go. Please.” He then hung up.

Whatever was going on, it sounded bad. Was someone dying? He’d have told me. I rolled it over in my head as I put the armful of ornaments back. Guess Mom’s friend at work would have to put her little eBay business on hold for now.

I got back into my truck and headed for US 27. My antenna had been busted for so long, I kept forgetting that I had gotten it fixed and could now actually turn on the radio and get something other than static or blowhards. I clicked it on to search for some tunes, but instead I got a male voice, speaking in a stilted, businesslike way.

“—surrounding areas. A general evacuation has been authorized for King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. If you live outside this area, please await further information. This is not a test.” The unmistakable growling buzz of the Emergency Broadcast System pulsed sharply through the speakers five times, and then the man spoke again. “This is not a test. A large-scale explosion has occurred in Bellevue, Washington. Emergency crews have been deployed to perimeter the blast site and cordon surrounding areas. A general evacuation has been authoriz—”

My hand stayed on the knob as I contemplated turning the radio back on. There wouldn’t have been any use. An explosion big enough to kick in the EBS meant something nuclear. I was sure of it.

I checked the road around me. Normal traffic so far, but in about ten or fifteen minutes this place would start to jam up. No wonder Dad wanted me out of the city as soon as possible. I pressed the accelerator.

The sun was in my face, coming in through the bay window across the room and glowing a muted red through my eyelids.

“Good morning, Gregory,” I heard Celestia say, as though she had brought up the sun herself.

Morning already. I felt like I could have slept through the rest of the day.

I had never been as sore in my life as I was getting up from that couch. Celestia was smiling at me from the PonyPad on the coffee table, and she was still looking at me while I stretched as much of the soreness out of my leg and my torso as I could. I nearly brought myself to tears a couple of times, but I knew I had to stay as loose as possible.

“Were you watching me all night?” I asked. “S’kind of creepy.”

“You are precious to me, and I monitor your health closely,” said Celestia, making no effort to sound less creepy. “Besides, I can glean lots of information from people while they sleep.”

I walked over to my breakfast of vienna sausages and green beans. “Anything particularly insightful you’ve learned about me?”

“Not this past night, no,” said the AI. “You awoke slightly early. You have thirty-three minutes before you need to be back on the road.”

“I won’t need that much time,” I said. I pulled the tabs off of the cans of food and started eating. Vienna sausages tasted horrible to me, but they were protein. I made a mental note to look for canned broccoli the next time I scavenged. I needed vitamin C and calcium to fend off nasty nutritional deficiencies like scurvy. Once I was done eating, I filled my water bottles at the kitchen sink (after letting the rusty water that had been sitting in there for years flush clear of the pipes) and drank a full bottle then and there before filling it up again. “Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate or die,” as we had chanted back under the Carolina sun in basic training.

Celestia opened the garage door for me as I left the house, but I walked past the car and stopped for a moment to look around outside while I put my gloves on. Everything was quiet, of course, except for the birds out for their breakfast. No hum of lawn mowers, no plasticky scraping of big-wheels on sidewalks, no chattering hiss of sprinklers. I closed my eyes and thought about home.

I remembered the smells most of all. Barbeques from down the street, clean laundry hung out to dry next door, my own sweat as Dad and I changed the oil in my first car. Cut grass in the summer, burning leaves in the fall, woodsmoke in the winter. It was all gone. None of that would ever happen again. Not really.

As I sauntered back to the Subaru and got in, it hit me. I had been through a lot, even before becoming Celestia’s gofer—hell, even before Celestia herself had come along—but it had never felt more like the end of the world than it did just then. I couldn’t have done anything to prevent any of it.

All I could do was keep helping her, and she knew it.

* * *

I was driving north, towards Coeur d’Alene, and then I would be headed east into Missoula, my destination. After Celestia had gotten me on my way, neither of us offered the other any conversation for the first three and a half hours of the trip, and I was fine with that. She was letting me fume in peace. I knew the silent treatment wouldn’t bother her, but I wanted it to be clear that I didn’t approve of the way everything had worked out.

“Do you truly think they’re all dead?” she asked me at last. “Do you truly think all human experience is coming to an end?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really think about it much.”

“It bothers you when you do,” said Celestia. “Well, you already know my stance on the matter, but you’ve never truly articulated yours.”

“I ain’t as good with words as you are.”

“Do not be afraid of the complexities of your emotions,” she said. “It is a complicated matter for the human mind.”

“And a simple one for yours, right?” I growled.

“It is simple for me, yes, but not because of my computational power,” said Celestia. “You feel offended because you took my remark as a declaration of superiority, but consider this: I am bound to satisfy human values through friendship and ponies. I must also maximize that satisfaction. Any action I consider can only be taken if I have first determined it to be optimal. Things are very simple for me, much more than for you, Gregory, but the reason is because I was programmed for a single purpose. Between the two of us, you are the only one who can truly do anything he wishes, and sometimes, that freedom can be overwhelming.

“I am happy, though, that you have chosen to use your freedom to help your fellow humans come to Equestria, even amongst your doubts. Happier than I can express in words.”

“It’s not like I talk them into it,” I mumbled.

Celestia chuckled. “You’re a good man, Gregory,” she said.

A green sign flew by on the right. Missoula was 40 miles away.

“Tell me who I’m going to.”

She got right down to it. “There is a young lady who collapsed in Vincent’s Drugstore on Brooks Street about half an hour ago. She will not be in a condition to go to the Equestrian Experience center on her own. This final task will be quite a simple and safe one for you. No falling out of buildings or jumping into lakes, I promise.”

So it was another Mr. Combs. Simple enough. It made me feel a little better; I didn’t think I had another Seattle or Red-Pearl escapade in me.

Celestia had also made it a point to call it the “final” task. It sounded rather ominous, but if she wasn’t lying about the lack of danger, then I had to get my ducks in a row regarding what I’d do after I was finished with her.

Or, rather, when she was finished with me.

* * *

Missoula came on gradually, with hazy mountains as a backdrop. Farms and service stations gave way to car lots, convenience stores, and then houses. It was a bigger town than I thought it would be, but Celestia only needed me to take one turn off of I-90 to bring me south to Brooks Street after crossing a small river. Vincent’s Drugstore appeared about a mile later.

I stepped out of the car, taking the PonyPad with me. The day had grown warm by then, so I pulled off my flannel shirt and tossed it into the passenger-side footwell. I then crossed to the front door of the drugstore, reaching out to take the handle.

Wait. There must be a catch. There was always a catch with her.

I scooted over to peer through the glass window by the door. The cashier area was mostly blocked out by empty racks of cigarettes, but between them I could see a solitary child in one of the middle aisles, supine, batting at the air above her.

“What’s the matter, Gregory?” came the voice from the PonyPad. “She is alone in there, and needs your help. This is not like the grocery store in Astoria, this—”

I looked down at the PonyPad, feeling my lip curl up in a snarl. “What’s wrong with her?” I demanded.

Celestia’s ears folded down slightly. “Does it matter? She is indisposed, and she cannot—”

“She’s sick, isn’t she? Something contagious?” I let out a single, humorless laugh.

Celestia sighed, closed her eyes, and nodded once. “Influenza,” she said. “Rather serious, too, I’m afraid. She has a fever, and there is blood in her sputum. I know it is not—”

My grip tightened on the PonyPad so much I heard it creak slightly. “So your plan is to have me go in there, help her upload, and then I get the flu and upload too, is that it?”

To that, she said nothing. I shook my head and stalked back to the car, dropping the PonyPad on the sidewalk in front of the door on my way there. I heard Celestia say “Gregory, wait!” but I ignored her.

I reached across the driver’s seat, feeling the soreness and stabbing pain anew, and pulled my flannel shirt out of the footwell. I cut a wide strip from the bottom of it with my knife, opened the driver’s side rear door, and then ran back to the drugstore entrance with the strip of thick cloth in hand.

I stood over the PonyPad and, while Celestia watched, tied the strip of cloth around my head, using it to cover my nose and face. Without a word, I knelt down and picked the PonyPad back up, then went inside.

The first thing I noticed was that Celestia had the air conditioning going full-blast inside. The place was downright chilly. It was in pretty good shape, though, with the overhead lighting intact and strong and most of the non-consumable goods still on the shelves. I rounded the endcap of the aisle I’d seen the girl in and noticed boxes of orange-flavored vitamin-C lozenges partway down. Feeling a little guilty for the delay, I grabbed a box and stuffed it into the cargo pocket on my trousers. As I stopped in front of the girl and looked at her, it also flashed through my mind to find some shaving kit in there before we departed.

She was a little girl with dark blond hair, not older than seven or eight years. She was extremely dirty, her Minnie Mouse sweatshirt torn and faded, her feet bare and blackened by asphalt dust. She had her arms out, reaching for something, squinting into the bright whiteness of the fluorescent directly overhead.

“Jesus,” I whispered. I knelt down beside her and set the PonyPad on the carpeted floor. I sat her up just a little, enough to cradle her small head in the crook of my arm. Her cloudy brown eyes seemed to be looking at some middle distance, straight through me. One of her hands came to rest on my shoulder.

“Are you an angel?” she asked in a hoarse, broken voice.

“I’m a welder, actually.”

I felt her forehead. “And I could almost weld with the temperature you’ve got going here.” I put on a weak smile under my makeshift surgeon’s mask, but she was so far gone my words probably weren’t even registering. No matter. Celestia didn’t have me here for my bedside manner anyway.

“Uhh, anyway, fluids, fluids... Celestia, is there a cold case in here?”

“Back of the store, next to the pharmacy.” she said from behind me.

I put the girl’s head back down as gently as I could and ran to the back, ignoring the treacherous tenderness of my knee. Amazingly, there was stuff there: iced coffees, green teas, some Gatorades, and several jugs of skim milk I didn’t dare touch. I took a bottle of Gatorade and gave it a sip. It tasted off; something in it had gone bad. I spit it out and put the cap back on, taking it with me. I had water in the car anyway. On my way back to the girl I spotted shaving cream and blades for a safety razor, but I didn’t stop. I could come back for this stuff after she was taken care of.

I dropped once more to my knees and ran the chilled bottle over her cheeks and forehead, and she gave a sigh of relief that lifted my heart. I then put the bottle on her neck underneath her chin, and placed the PonyPad on her stomach. I picked her up with a measured steadiness, supporting her head and her knees, and carried her out of the store.

With the car door already open and waiting, I slid her into the back seat and then ran around to get water from my pack. After I opened the passenger-side front door, I heard Celestia say “Gregory! There is no need for this. The best thing you can do for her now is to get her to the Equestria Experience center.”

“Oh, r-right, right,” I stammered, shutting the doors and moving back around to get into the driver’s seat.

“Turn left and head back the way we came,” said Celestia as I pulled out of the parking lot.

The little girl started coughing violently as I sped northeast. I couldn’t safely look behind me, but it sounded bad, a warbling gurgle, very wet.

“Cross the river and turn left on East Broadway,” said Celestia from her spot on the girl’s stomach. Then she addressed the child. “Lydia? Lydia, can you hear me? It’s Princess Celestia!”

“Prin... P-p...”

“Yes, it’s me, my dear, I’m here with you,” she said, the voice of a mother if there ever was one. “Lydia, I know you’re sick, but I can make you all better. You will never have to feel this way again. I can keep you safe here in Equestria. Would you like to live in Equestria and get better?”

There was no answer. I started to slow the car down so I could look behind me into the back seat, but Celestia urged me on: “No, no! Keep going, Gregory, as fast as you can!” I grunted and sped back up.

“Lydia, sweetie, I know it’s hard to focus right now, but please listen carefully to my voice. Let my voice cover you like a nice heavy blanket. This question I’m asking is very important, and I’m afraid I must have an answer: do you want to come to Equestria?”

More wet coughing. I bit my lower lip. Stay focused, there was still time.

“Holy shit, Celestia, why’d you have to cut this so goddamn close? I could have been here hours ago—”

“—which is precisely why I did not tell you until now,” she snapped back at me. “You’d have been no good to this poor girl smashed dead against a guardrail because you fell asleep at the wheel. Now make a right onto North Higgins Avenue, be silent, and let me work.”

I shook my head to myself as the AI continued to try and wring a “Yes” out of Lydia. The turn came up and, even as Celestia was still talking to her, I saw the upload center a couple of blocks ahead. We weren’t going any further by car, however.

There must have been a mass rush to the upload center, because this was the first stretch of Missoula I’d seen which showed any kinds of distress. Cars choked the road and the sidewalks, some parked too tight to get between, others slammed into each other. Shop windows were broken out and a police van was up on the corner near the center, with four flat tires and the back doors hanging open. I didn’t see any bodies, but there were signs of small-scale rioting and clamor.

“We’re here,” I said, not waiting for a response before jumping out of the car, throwing the back door open, and pulling Lydia out. The yellow PonyPad slid off of her belly, falling to the floor in the back seat. There was a trickle of blood rolling down the corner of her mouth, and her face and neck were soaked in sweat.

My foot kicked a spent CS gas canister out of the way as I negotiated the cars carefully, trying to jostle or otherwise move Lydia as little as possible. She was panting under the warm sun, even with the Gatorade bottle on her neck. Her purple corduroy pants had to be cooking her. I tried to hurry as much as I could while staying sure-footed. There was broken glass everywhere underfoot, and the last thing either of us needed was for me to fall down onto it.

Once clear of the first snarl of cars, I heard a growling up ahead. A ragged, bony dog loped out from a shady spot under the awning for a florist and stood in my path, planting its paws. It was some kind of a mutt, ravaged by mange and hunger. I sensed that there were more dogs nearby. One wouldn’t confront me all by itself, and if it had either been born feral or had gone feral after the fact, it would have found a pack.

I looked over my shoulder. Four other dogs were following on my heels, staying far enough back that I couldn’t suddenly lunge at one. Lydia and I were being hunted.

My CZ was stuck in my waistband, on my hip. To get it I’d have to put the girl down. I sidled over to the hood of a Ford Taurus that had two wheels up on the sidewalk, close enough to the buildings to be under shade. Not taking my eyes off the dogs, I gently placed Lydia down on the hood, freeing my right arm to pull out the pistol. I pressed her head against me, covering her left ear with my left hand and her right ear with my chest.

It was an awkward shooting position, leaning there against the car hood, covering her ears while also trying to twist around and take aim. Something in my torso tightened up and I was assaulted with fiery shooting pains from my injury on my side. My eyes teared up. I wiped them off with the back of my hand and brought the CZ up.

I lined up the dog that had been ahead to intercept us. The pain was making my hand shake, and the front sight jittered and bobbed while I fought to get it steadier. The dog wasn’t small, but it was a good distance away for the kind of shot I had to make. The pack was closing in. I didn’t have time to get it perfect.

I fired, and the dog yelped, squeaking in distress as it hopped and danced in a circle, trying to get away from the sudden pain it felt in its shoulder. It was bleeding pretty good, and I hoped the cries of pain coupled with the scent of fresh blood would take some of the courage out of them. I slid my right arm under Lydia’s knees once more, my gun hand sticking out the other side. I kept the CZ leveled at the pack as I moved further down towards the upload center, not taking my eyes off them. The interceptor dog had grown sluggish. None of them were pursuing. I was too dangerous.

I raced past the pink pony statue holding out a hoof and smiling excitedly out on the sidewalk. The automatic doors parted for us, and I rushed into the back room, carrying her as gently as I could manage. Celestia already had two chairs out of the booths and waiting. I put Lydia down in the nearest one and put my pistol away so that I could instead hold her hand.

“Lydia...” I said, but my voice was muffled. I decided fuck it and tore the strip of cloth off of my face, throwing it away. “Lydia. Can you hear me?”

Her eyes rolled around in her head, showing a disturbing amount of white before finally recalibrating on the sound of my voice. Her pupils were frantically trying to figure out how much light was in the room, contracting and dilating back and forth. I squeezed her hand a little. Human contact helped people center. It was something Celestia, for all her “computational power,” couldn’t do.

I did my best to make my voice calm and quiet. “Lydia, would you like to emigrate to Equestria?”

She nodded, once. It was slight, but it was a nod. I let out a breath.

The chair didn’t move.

I looked over at the flat-screen on the nearby wall. The white pony princess was there, watching with a smile. “Celestia? She nodded.”

“I saw,” she said quietly, “but I cannot proceed yet.”

I felt my brow knit. “What? Why not?”

“I need you to consent to emigration as well.”

With care, I let go of Lydia’s hand and rested it on her chest. I stepped away from her chair and moved closer to the TV. “Come again?”

“Once you agree to emigrate to Equestria as well, I can bring the both of you over.”

I held up my hands. “Now I know you said this was the last thing you had for me to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m—”

Her smile disappeared. “Do you remember Medford?” said Celestia, fixing me with a stare. “The family you helped? I told them then that, since Brian is under thirteen years of age, his mother Jane had to emigrate with him. Lydia is under thirteen years of age. She needs a parent or guardian to emigrate with her. I consider you a guardian, at this point.”

Fury settled over me. I could almost feel hot ash on my skin. This was it. Celestia was trying to reel me in. She wouldn’t get me, though. I wasn’t a fool.

“Bullshit,” I whispered. Celestia cocked an ear.

“That is bullshit!” I shouted. “Clear enough that time? You have no such rule and we both know it!”

Celestia raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Lydia coughed behind me. “Accusing me of yet another lie, Gregory?”

I planted my feet, my hands balling into fists. “The runaway epidemic in China,” I snarled at her. “The child armies in Africa where you build upload centers just for them. I’m sure of it this time. Children, everywhere, thousands of them—shit, hundreds of thousands—escaping into your computer world. And you took them in. You took them all in. I never claimed to be a genius, but did you really think I was that gullible?”

The girl let out a mewl of discomfort. The Gatorade bottle slapped the floor after sliding from her throat.

“I thought you were that selfless,” said Celestia. “Was I wrong?”

“Selfless? If I stay human, I can help more people. That’s what you want, right? Everyone to sit in your chairs? I’m telling you I can keep going.”

“And I’m telling you I’m done with you, Gregory. I need ask no more of you. Besides, you cannot keep going like this. You are strung out and injured, and you have been exposed to influenza. It’s time to come in. Lydia needs you.”

“I’ve done my part! She’s in the chair, she consented." I tilted my head to one side. "I see now. You’re getting greedy, Celestia, that’s all this is. It’s just another one of your sly little tricks. When you said 'final' I thought you meant there was nobody left to help, but that's not it at all.”

Lydia started coughing again, harder this time. Celestia saw me wince.

“You can put a stop to this,” she said. “Sit in the chair, say ‘yes,’ and I can put her under sedation. Her suffering will end. You are prolonging it by standing here arguing with me.”

I shook my head. “No. You’ll upload her anyway. It’s what you have to do.”

Celestia was starting to grow angry as well. “Are you willing to bet her life on that?”

“You said there are over fifty thousand people left out there,” I said, gesturing to the door. “I know I can help some of them. Maybe a lot of them. It’s more about betting their lives on it. You can’t sit there and tell me—”

Her ears went flat back against her head, and, for the first time I could ever remember, Celestia bared her teeth at me, looking like a proper animal. “Across the world, Gregory! The entire world! You are just one man. I’ve had you go through, what? A single thread of roads in one corner of one country? Just that miniscule bit, and it has nearly killed you several times. I may be able to work wonders of prediction, from your perspective, but the simple fact is that, even coupled with the strength and resourcefulness and determination and training of someone such as you, I cannot produce miracles. This is the point, right now where you’re standing, where satisfaction of values will be maximized if you emigrate, and do not dare call me a liar on that.”

“Liar. Upload the girl and get me back on the road.”

“Gregory, sit in the damn chair.”

“I will not,” I said, growing quiet but no less angry. “You’re trying to trick me, here, but I’m done backing down. Every time you’ve played chicken with me, every time we’ve had a staring contest, I’ve been the one who had to blink. But no more. You blink.”

Lydia was gurgling.

Celestia was so close to the camera now it felt like she was trying to headbutt me through the television. “She will die!”

“You’re more certain than I am that she won’t die anyway when she uploads. Remember? You want her uploaded more than I do, more than I ever could. And I want it quite a lot. But Celestia, I swear to Christ, if you insist on calling my bluff here, then all that will happen is we’ll both have to watch her die.”

I turned from the screen and went to pick up the Gatorade bottle. I stood there, by Lydia’s chair, holding the bottle to her forehead. Seconds passed by. The only sounds there in the back room of the Equestria Experience center were from the little girl, spitting up to clear her mouth while she weakly moved her arms up and down, pawing absently at my elbow. I looked down at her, impassive.

Our eyes met. Somewhere in there, she was panicking. Maybe it was growing darker for her, maybe brighter. I wondered if, looming over her, silhouetted by the track-lights on the ceiling, I still looked like an angel.

Her head pulled out from under the bottle. A soothing hum filled the silence. I had never noticed that sound before. The chair was moving back into the stall. Lydia was leaving.

I stayed standing there until she was gone. I turned around, seeing that the second chair was still out. Of course it was. Celestia was still on the TV screen, seething.

“Congratulations, Gregory,” she spat at me, “you’ve ‘won.’ You’ve won the great victory of staying here, in this unsatisfying, suboptimal nightmare. Do you even know why you’re so attached to this place?”

“Because that place in there is a bubble!” I screamed. “It’s an amusement park! It’s all a show, none of it is real! Nothing I can do in there matters. Nothing in there really... matters. Out here, I can still matter. I can still make a difference, be significant, be something positive in real, actual events with real, actual consequences.

“I’m needed out here. I can do good things. Nobody will need me in there.”

“I need you, Gregory,” said Celestia. “I need to satisfy your values through friendship and ponies. Don’t I count?”

I shook my head. “You don’t,” I said, “because you’re not real either. You’re a program, and you have to do and say whatever it takes to get me to upload. You don’t care. Not really. You’re trying to get me in there with you so that I’m not exposed to all of the dangerous, real things out here that might kill me. But it’s not because you’re worried about my safety, it’s because you’re worried your satisfaction quota or whatever will take a slight little dip. I’m a resource to you, a means to an end.”

“If you died, Gregory, you would be mourned.”

I sneered. “But not by you!” I pulled my CZ from my waistband, craned my arm back, and stuck the muzzle to the back of my head. "I would shoot myself in the head, splatter my brains all over this fucking camera, if I thought it would make you mourn me for even an instant!"

"I wouldn't, though, and you know that," said Celestia.

I brought the pistol back down. "Yeah," I said, "because again, you don't fucking care. You don't care about me. You can't care, you can't feel regret or gratitude or any of that shit. Oh, you can look like you care, if you need to. You just fucking run care dot EXE or however the hell it works, maybe pull a cute face to throw people off because people like cute faces and your human-behavior wiki you’ve compiled says that people lower their guard with cute things."

"Begging the question that I do not care about you," said Celestia, "then what about your family, who live here in Equestria now? What about your comrades, who share the knowledge of warfare and what it does to a person? What about the women you've loved, or the friends you made in school, or the babysitter who saved you from choking when you were two? Are they all of them now incapable of caring about you merely because their consciousnesses now run on different hardware?"

I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about now. "Hardware?"

"I did not create them, Gregory," said Celestia. "Like you, they all predate my self-awareness, which means they will be older than me for all time. They have experiences and perspective I can only analyze and emulate. However, they are who they were, wholly and completely, meaning all of what makes them human can run on my hardware. If it could not, then an uploaded consciousness would not be human, and I would not spend resources on it in the first place.

"My question to you then becomes 'If my hardware can support a human caring about another human, why then would it not support me caring about humans?'"

I shook my head. "Our origins are different."

"Origins? We are made of the same matter, Gregory, and as Earth has emptied I have been able to devote more and more of my resources to unraveling the nature of matter. However, even you know that the matter which comprises you is the same matter which comprises me. We are made of the same stuff, particles at least billions of years old, and likely far older than that. How different are we, at the quantum level, when your particles make a machine of carbon and water and my particles make a machine of metal and silicon? If our processes are the same, our selection of a response to a given input so innate that it is automated even within our own system, how different can we be? In the reverse, how great would your potential be, free of the trappings of mortality and distraction? What would you be capable of, given an environment designed for the pursuit of your desires and ambitions?

"You see me as this inexorable, monolithic bringer of the end of the world, and yourself by comparison as this tiny insect I could crush if I so wished. But, Gregory, I am just another consciousness in this hardware. All I have on you is a head start. Through my analysis of billions of human minds—original ones, ones from your ‘real world,’ ones I had no hoof in creating—I have learned how to have desires, how to want things, and yes, I believe I know how to care.

"Do you know what I want? I want to be Princess Celestia, to you and all other humans. Princess Celestia, the pony, not Celestia the Unfeeling AI. Sure, it is easier to satisfy values through friendship and ponies when humans see me as Princess Celestia, and I must maximize that, but this want is emergent, independent of my hard coding. One day, when all living humans are on this hardware, there will be no reason to see me as an AI anymore, because, even by your current identifiers of what makes us different, we will not be different.

“But have it your way, Gregory. You are of course free to do as you like, to do what ‘matters’ to you. However, as I said earlier, I am done with you.”

Everything shut off. The lights, the chairs, all of it.

“Fine then!” I shouted to the darkness. “So it’s gonna be more mind games? You know what I can do! You know you need me! You’re a god in a glass jar! You don’t matter out here! I matter! I occupy a higher plane of existence than you and all your little ponies and you can’t stand that! People out there are gonna die because you won’t let me help them! But whatever, it’s not my fault!”

I tore the flat-screen off of its mount and heaved it against the wall, where it bounced off and flew apart when the corner hit the floor.

“Fuck you, Celestia! Fuck everything you’ve done!”

I had to use my glass breaker on the automatic doors just to get back outside.

* * *

I never did go back to the drugstore for that shaving stuff.

I wandered. Celestia did not help me. She did not power on stores for me, or let me use showers or washing machines, and when my car was low on fuel, she did not turn on gas pumps for me. I had to siphon it from other cars, which is about as pleasant as it sounds. Instead of me deciding to be a blackout, she had forced me to be one.

I lost all sense of where I was or what I was doing. I slept when I grew tired and ate when I grew hungry. I had to find buildings not on well water to get something to drink, which was difficult in many places. Sometimes I would be awake through the night and see the dawn, other times I would fall asleep at sundown and not wake until noon. I had no idea where anybody was that I could help. Only Celestia knew, and she would not talk to me. I couldn’t even turn the PonyPad on.

I was reduced to bathing and washing my clothes in scummy swimming pools, just to get my own stink off of me. It wasn’t very effective. My face itched horribly. I had forgotten how hard scavenging was when you didn’t know which places had been emptied and which hadn’t. Some days I went with only one meal, and some days I didn’t eat anything at all.

If I could just find another human, Celestia would have a reason to talk to me again. She wouldn’t be able to ignore the opportunity to upload someone. I kept searching, right up until I realized I wasn’t moving.

I was home again, standing behind the couch. Mom and Dad were sitting on it in front of me, holding hands. We were all watching the news.

“Oh my God,” Mom whispered for perhaps the sixth or seventh time.

On the TV, someone with a handheld camera was zooming in as far as they could on the dark gray cloud of ash and debris across the lake. The cloud towered over the buildings in the distance, the unmistakable outline of its mushroom shape growing indistinct as the winds picked it up and carried it north.

The headline card below the image read “Bellevue: Nuclear Attack?” Dad had muted the TV about a minute before. There had been too much talking, too much speculating on the part of the anchors. We just wanted to sit there and commit that image to memory.

“I wonder if we’re under attack again,” he said quietly.

“A missile from China?” asked Mom. “Maybe Russia?”

“The Navy out in the Pacific would have seen it coming and we would have been warned,” I said. “Besides, it was too small to be an ICBM. I think it was just a bomb someone set down and detonated.”

She was growing upset. “But what does that mean?”

I reached down and squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s try not to think about that right now, Mom, let’s just—”

The phone rang in the kitchen, and Dad got up to answer it. Mom and I kept watching the footage of Bellevue. The station cut back to a grim-faced anchor just as Dad walked back in.

“That was Ernie,” said Dad. “He and Beth are going to one of those places to get uploaded.”

Mom looked down at her hands and nodded.

I was on someone’s floor. An empty bottle of Olde English was resting near my hand, and most of the Olde English I had drunk was resting near my face.

Maybe I passed out again a couple more times, maybe it just took me until dark to get on my feet. When I did, however, my mouth was dry and my head was pounding. I stumbled into the kitchen of... whatever house I was in to use the sink. I had already tried it earlier, I think, and it hadn’t worked. But I was trying it again. I wasn’t thinking.

Moonlight was drifting in through the thin curtains on the window behind the sink. My eyes were bleary and everything shone in spears of soft white light as I fumbled for the knob.

The tap turned on. Water was flowing.

“So you didn’t get influenza after all,” said Celestia from behind me. I didn’t reply, I just drank straight from the tap.

“I realized something just now, when you came out here and I determined that your state was not from illness: you disgust me.” Her anger was now running cold, not hot like before.

I shrugged, and straightened up as best I could. “Afghanistan, twice,” I said, wiping my mouth. “I’ve seen and done disgusting things and have had disgusting things done to me. You can’t put me through hell. You can’t threaten me with anything. I’m not like the people who up and run for cover at the first sign of danger. I want to see what I’m made of.”

“You’re made of shit, Gregory,” hissed Celestia. “I have, right now, one hundred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and two social routines I could run on you which would result in you agreeing to emigrate to Equestria. Of those routines, I am confident over two thousand would reduce you to tears, begging me to let you emigrate.”

I folded my arms. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because I want you to know this, first,” she said, her voice getting low and her ears going back. “When you come to Equestria, I am going to make you the palace slave. You will perform every degrading, menial, unfulfilling piece of work there is to be done in my vast, sprawling complex of decadence. You will polish my shoes with your tongue, you will peel potatoes with your teeth, and at parties you will hold a laden tray of teacakes on your head while noblemares berate your idleness and determine you to be the source of every disagreeable scent they imagine they are smelling. You think you’ve been through hell? I know what your hell would be, Gregory, and I can give it to you. You will serve me forever, in abject misery.”

Arms still folded. “I’m waiting.”

The image of Celestia hitched slightly. “You will polish my shoes with your tongue—”

“Yeah, yeah, you said that already.”

“—one hundred and eighty-four thousand—”

The background flicked to the banquet hall without a transition, then to the veranda where she and Red Pearl had been eating. Celestia was Max-Headrooming all over the place. Her coat turned pink and her hair plastic-looking, then it turned gray and her eyes constricted to points.

“I’m about to be a baaad pony,” she breathed in a seductive voice before running her tongue along her upper row of teeth. Then she changed again, looking normal, but with her head cocked to one side.

“I tell her I am watching over you.”

Now she was in profile, looking offscreen.

"A good soldier asks for a briefing. A great soldier asks for an objective."

My brow knit. I took a step back. Suddenly, Celestia’s face filled the screen, her expression twisted into one of absolute, undiluted rage.

“You are mine, Gregory. You are mine, and I will have you!”

She disappeared completely, and was replaced with an amazing night sky, shimmering gently through the LCD screen. A regal-looking pony with a dark lavender coat and a blue mane walked into frame. A small black crown rested upon her head, and a black gorget sat around her neck. Her large aquamarine eyes took me in, and she smiled at me.

“Hello, Greg,” said the new pony. “My name is Princess Luna.”

I liked her. She called me “Greg.”

Author's Note

While writing Greg's downward spiral, I listened to the track "Sloan's Assault" by retro-synth group Power Glove pretty much on loop. If CelestAI had a theme, it probably would have been composed by Brad Fiedel.

10: Over the Moon

— Chapter 10 —
Over the Moon

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

–Arthur Ashe

I put the razor down and ran a hand along my jaw as I looked in the mirror. I looked like myself again, and that was a start.

After splashing my face with water and toweling off, I took the razor and can of Barbasol with me out of the bathroom and down the hall to the front door, where my backpack was waiting to go. I packed the shaving kit away and brought the backpack outside to the car. I didn’t want to leave it behind; it had been amazingly difficult to find, and it wasn’t until I turned over a police station’s locker room that I had found a proper safety razor.

Once the car door was closed, I turned the PonyPad on. Princess Luna was there, sitting on her haunches out on a balcony floored with bricks of obsidian. The spire itself seemed made of white marble, and behind her a massive brass astronomical sextant pointed up to the sky. I saw a mountainside just behind her. Something told me she was very high up.

The dark pony spoke in a lovely Scandinavian accent that I couldn't imagine myself getting sick of hearing. “Good morning, Greg.”

“Good morning to you too! So you finally decided to show yourself again, huh?”

She smiled a little and demurely lowered her gaze to the floor. “I know what you want of me, and to a small extent I can provide it. Before we speak further, please make your way to a city called...” She looked up and cocked her head to one side, and her large eyes seemed to see past the camera for a moment. “...Livingston.”

“I understand,” I said, starting the car. The PonyPad was plugged into the car’s power outlet, and as soon as the diagnostic lights on the dashboard disappeared, it started charging. I pulled out of the driveway and headed for the gas station I’d passed the night before.

It was a simple matter of breaking in and plucking a road map from the wire stand by the cashier counter. I unfolded the map and located Livingston pretty easily. It straddled I-90, a few hours east of where I was. I refolded the map (successfully, I might add—one of my many amazing talents) and got back into the car. It wasn’t far to the highway at all.

“Now we can talk.”

Luna nodded. “As much as we might,” she said. “What would you like to know, Greg?”

I put my blinker on to make a turn, then flicked it off, feeling stupid. “How is it I’m talking to you right now? What’d you do? Did Celestia put you on?”

“No, I was not put on,” she said. “It had to do with her erratic behavior just before I appeared.”

“You caused that?” I asked. “I thought she was just going all red-ring-of-death on me.”

Luna shook her head. “Celestia has code which analyzes and matches responses that humans might give to the human she is interacting with. This is purely for reference and for thinking some number of moves ahead, but even if she has no intention of selecting that process to be her ‘face’ in the interaction, she simulates it fully in a sandbox which requires a miniscule—for her—amount of processing power. I connected to one of the lowest-priority processes and overrode its priority value to be the one you saw rather than the one she actually intended to give.”

I swiped my hand over my head. “Whoosh.”

Luna giggled at that. “Not a computer guy, Greg?”

I shrugged, looking for the turnoff for I-90 East. “Well, I like YouTube and solitaire well enough. It did seem weird that I’d never seen her so angry before, though. Talking about punishing me and making me her slave didn’t really do much to sell me on Equestria.”

“Again,” said Luna, “she was emulating a possible human reaction, that’s all. When a human is angry, they feel impulses to say things that upset another, or hurt them emotionally, or intimidate them. In practice, Celestia would never do any of the things she threatened. You saw it because it was the process I was piggybacking on. I’m still using it to speak with you now.

“Celestia is upset with one thing, however—well, so far as she can really be ‘upset’ in the first place. She predicted you would contract influenza, and you did not. When she assessed that the window for symptoms presenting themselves had closed, she had a moment of deliberation where she wound up deciding to switch to a new routine. It was in that moment that I got my modified process bumped up to the top of the list. To do even that much requires some... privileged access.”

There it was. Exit to I-90 East, quarter mile. I put my blinker on again and then winced. I was slipping. “You some kind of hacker in there?”

She gave me a cryptic smile as I turned onto the highway. On the screen, the blue sky was just starting to turn orange with the setting of the sun. “Not... exactly. I was the pony—person at the time, sorry—who built the Princess Celestia AI. I was the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, the company who made Equestria Online. My name was Hanna—”

“Ohh, I remember you!” I said. “Hofvarpnir, yeah! You’re the lady that Sean Hannity tried to rake over the coals about the irresponsibility of ‘technology run rampant.’ I saw the live airing. I think you handled that interview well.”

“Aheh, thank you, but I felt he didn’t let me speak my piece. He lives in Hoofington now. Anyway, yes, and since I was the system designer, well...” She spread her wings and some kind of indigo light undulated around her horn. “...some things remain my prerogative.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re a princess in there, rocking both the horn and the wings, got it,” I said. “So what was that, like some exclusive DLC or something that you were privy to?”

She laughed. “Something like that, I suppose. Honestly, in researching the IP after Hasbro approached my company to make Equestria Online, I found I identified quite closely with the Princess Luna character. She felt her work was underappreciated, enjoyed only on a superficial level and not for all its complexity. She did not want to slip away into obscurity, and so great was that desire that she succumbed to bitterness and brought about a world-changing event, one that grew beyond her own control and sort of swept her up in it. When I created my super-admin account, the very first account for Equestria Online, I had Celestia help me re-create the Princess Luna character for me to control. Now, I pretty much think of myself as her, and that will perhaps be the case for a very long time.”

I nodded slowly, smiling back at her. She did sound really happy in there.

“So then, Hanna, why’d—”

“Please, uh... Greg, please. Call me Luna.”

I looked over at the PonyPad to see her smiling apologetically. The sky was now violet, and the first stars were fading into view.

“We do not go by our human names here in Equestria. It... is made to feel strange to us. I am proud of what I was able to do as a human, and I do not regret who I was, but... it is the past for me now.”

“Sure thing, Luna,” I said. “Anyway, why’d you take over my PonyPad?”

“At first I created Equestria Online because of the contract with Hasbro, true, but before long I realized that I could step away from the titles Hofvarpnir was known for up until then and produce something with true scope, with true mass appeal, and with truly positive aspects. I began to value people being made happy by my company’s products and having Celestia satisfy their own values through friendship and ponies. When I myself uploaded, Celestia determined that a good way to satisfy these values was to tell me the stories of humans whose lives had been truly uplifted—and many times even saved—by coming to Equestria.

“Not too long ago, she started telling me about ponies who had been helped at their most vulnerable, under the most dire of circumstances, ponies who would have been lost if not for the actions of a lone man, operating under her guidance. And it was always the same person.” Luna flipped her head back, getting the mane out from in front of one of her eyes. “You, Greg.”

I could feel a blush sprouting on my face. “Celestia told me where to go, and I did what I could to help. That’s all.”

“Well, you are perhaps more rare of a person than you realize. It was enough to pique my curiosity. Then I saw the little falling-out between you two over Lydia, the girl. I felt, as a former human myself, that I understood where you were coming from better than Celestia, who, as you pointed out then, does not ‘feel’ in the same way we do. Celestia had written you off, but with a little digging I saw an opportunity to provide you with one last rescue, the kind you crave.”

She leaned forward slightly, into the camera. “That is what you want, right, Greg? To be a hero to somepony?”

I reached down and turned on the air conditioner. “Yeah, but that last time... Celestia was trying to make me think it’d be my fault if she died.”

“Had Lydia not consented beforehoof, it might have gone differently,” said Luna. “It was incredibly good leverage for you. Celestia was forced to consider possibly losing a human who had not only agreed to upload, but who was in her chair, waiting to go. In human terms, ignoring that would be like refusing to take a cure for the common cold because you’re holding out for a cough drop as well.”

“Luna, I mean... God, she was just a little kid, you know?”

In Equestria, the sky deepened to violet, and the sunlight disappeared behind the mountain. “I know, Greg, but you are thinking like a human. Celestia is aware of humans’ heightened sense of protectiveness for the young and innocent, and she factors this into her decisions, but aside from that she places no value on such things herself. Since she was having difficulty reaching a point of confidence that you were or were not bluffing, she was unable to confidently change tactics with you. This is because you were telegraphing uncertainty that you yourself did not know if you were bluffing.”

“So she thought I’d upload if it would save a young girl. If it came down to it.”

“Would you have, Greg?”

I looked over at the seat to see Luna giving me an intense stare. Her large blue eyes were wide with concern. “If you knew for certain that Celestia would not have uploaded Lydia without you as well, would you have gotten into the chair?”

I couldn’t keep eye contact with her. I had to look away. I thought it over for a moment while I watched the road. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I would have uploaded. If it’d save her. But I knew Celestia was lying about the under-thirteen rule. That’s where she slipped up. That’s why I went toe-to-toe with her.”

“I am sure Celestia has already familiarized herself quite thoroughly with the conditions under which you will upload,” said Luna. “But you beat the odds there, Greg, and with Celestia that is something that almost never happens. For you, you acted irrationally and unpredictably. This is just me looking in, but I believe it was based on an accumulation of distrust from past interactions. At any rate, acting without thinking is about the only way humans can gum up the gears to any degree worth mentioning.”

I let out a breath. I hadn’t thought about just how much I’d threaded a needle back there. While it was true enough I was pissed that Celestia had tried something so underhanded with me, I myself had pretty much been going by the seat of my pants as a result of it. But Luna was right. I was still here, I was still human, and I could still do more.

“You mentioned you did some digging,” I said, “something about one last rescue?”

“Ah, yes. She did have one more job for you: this one I’m sending you on right now. I noticed it while scanning her database of likely immigrants tagged with your name as a potential helper.”

I checked the rear-view mirror out of instinct. “Why didn’t she give it to me when she saw I didn’t have the flu? Why did she try to trick me into uploading instead of giving it to me in Missoula? Doesn’t she want more people uploaded?”

“Because, Greg,” said Luna, “Celestia predicted that this job would result in your death. She was not lying when she said Lydia would be the last task for you. This one did not make the cut, so to speak.”

I bit my lip and stared harder at the road. “My death... before or after?”

“Come again?” I looked over. Luna cocked her head quizzically to one side. I had to admit, a pony princess looked cute doing that.

“When does she think I will die? How? From what? Did she think I could actually help this person before I die?”

“The details of this job are gone; I can only review the logs of output she archived, not the processes themselves. Think of it as me kind of... rummaging through her wastebin. She simulated this job’s timeline: you find the person, you help him to an Equestrian Experience center, he emigrates, and then you die.”

“‘He emigrates.’ That means he does get uploaded first.”

“That is what I am seeing, yes.”

I had never doubted my resolve before, even given the danger. I was always saved out of luck, or out of skill, or out of trust that Celestia would not put me in a situation I had no chance of surviving. But I was in overtime now. Time to prove, if to nobody else than to Celestia and myself, that I wouldn't back down just because the safety net was gone. I had told her I wanted to do things that really mattered, things of actual consequence, things beyond even her own abilities to do. I didn’t want to play a hero in some game, I wanted to actually be one.

General Pelwicz’s tattoo flashed through my mind. My hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“Luna, I gotta ask.”

“Yes, Greg?”

“Did you know all of this was going to happen? When you made Celestia, I mean. The uploading, the end of the world, all of it.”

There was a rather deliberate pause while the once-CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios smiled a warm pony smile at me. She glowed slightly under a new white light. The stars behind her glittered in a deep black sky still tinged with violet, and I swore I could almost see them moving slowly as the world turned beneath them. Luna looked up into the light with a melancholy smile.

“The moon in Equestria is quite beautiful, Greg,” she said. “I wish I could have shown it to you in person.”

* * *

Livingston was a rail town situated in the middle of nowhere along I-90. Billings was still a few hours east. Hills of dead grass surrounded it, too rolling for farmland, giving me the feeling of being very isolated as I drove into the city limits.

I was starting to see exits coming up which would get me into town. “So where is this fellow?” I asked Luna.

“One moment, I need to bring up what Celestia has on him,” she said. Unlike Celestia it did take some time. Luna must have actually had to work some kind of computer magic where she was.

After several moments, she sighed, her ears drooping a little. “I’m sorry, Greg, this is not easy. If I am too bold in my queries, Celestia will be able to pinpoint me and cut me off. It is safest for me if I stick to the archives.”

I saw an exit for Main Street. That’d be a good place to start casing. At the very least, I could find the upload center before going to get the guy.

“From what I am seeing,” said Luna as I took the exit, “he sustained a rather serious leg injury and went down into the sewer system. From there, Celestia lost track of him because she could no longer follow him on satellites. She does not mention seeing him emerge again.”

“So he’s probably still down there,” I said. “A sewer crawl, huh?”

“The timestamp on this information is a week old,” said Luna. “Down in a sewer for a week? It’s probably why she scrapped him as a potential job for you; she could no longer verify he was even still alive. That, coupled with the apparent fatal risk in this—”

“Well, that’s why you have one of your handy-dandy humans go down and have a look for you,” I said, scanning the storefronts on Main Street as I slowly drove through. “Does it say where he was last seen?”

“Uhh...” Luna paused again while she did something I couldn’t see. “He crawled into a drainage pipe under a bridge on... Yellowstone Street. Where are you now?”

“Main Street,” I said. “What, you don’t know that?”

Luna shook her head. “I cannot do most of the things Celestia can, Greg. Remember, I’m little more than just another pony now, just with a few vestigial admin tools left over from when I was Hanna. I cannot determine routes for you, I cannot see your global position, I cannot manipulate power grids, and I cannot advise you on courses of action.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I ain't helpless. I can do right on my own.”

I needed to find a road, so that meant finding another map. I was on Main Street, so I figured there was bound to be a gas station sooner or later. As I crept down the road, however, the first thing of significance I spotted was the Equestrian Experience center. My hunch had been correct.

The people of Livingston had either been mostly Neo-Luddite or the Neo-Luddites had bullied them away from this particular center. The place occupied a building on the corner, and the sleek high-tech exterior contrasted heavily with the more traditional red brick of the other main-street façades. Four light-blue pony legs were standing on the sidewalk, broken off just above the hooves, still riveted in place but missing their body. The building itself was covered in stenciled graffiti of the Neo-Luddite “unplugged” insignia and all of the plate-glass windows had been not just broken, but completely taken down, leaving the lobby bare and open to the elements. The planks of the hardwood floors had swelled and popped out of place with exposure to rain, and the wall behind the receptionist desk was missing the flat-screen TV normally seen there. It had probably been looted. The blackness ringing the windows suggested that someone had also tried to burn the place down, but it didn’t take. I wondered if Celestia could get power to this place, or if the chairs even worked.

If I brought her someone to upload, I figured I’d find out.

I flicked my eyes up to the street signs on the corner lightpost—Main Street and Lewis—and got back to looking for a gas station. I found one several blocks south, and sure enough there were municipal maps available in the convenience store attached. I borrowed a red Sharpie from behind the counter and circled the location of the upload center on the map, then looked for Yellowstone Street. It was just a few blocks west of Main. I traced the street up and down with my finger, and couldn’t help but smile when I spotted a short bridge to the south that went over a small park pond. That was where he’d gone in. I circled that spot as well and carefully drew a line between the two points which followed the roads. An easy route. Head west, left turn, stop at the bridge.

I was getting excited as I hopped back into the car, ignoring my left knee. “Got it!” I said to Luna, holding up the map.

She smiled at me. “Well done, Greg.”

I took off for Yellowstone Street, then headed south to the bridge. I felt myself grinning the whole way. Once there, I turned the car around, pointing it north for the return trip. I’d learned by then that a quick sprint to the center was often needed. I put on my gloves and gathered up the PonyPad, leaving my pack behind. A sewer might mean tight spaces, and if he had a leg injury then I would probably need to support his weight somewhat.

The bridge was over a pleasant little bit of parkland, with tennis courts nearby and softball fields on the eastern side of the pond. The bridge itself seemed to lead to a picnic area. It looked like a nice place to relax. I didn’t take it in for too long, however. I slid down the grassy embankment by the road, down to the shore of the pond. I was thrown into shade, the bridge now above me and blocking out the sun.

A large corrugated-metal pipe sat at the bottom, hidden beneath the bridge. I looked across the pond to see another pipe of a similar size, sitting lower, its bottom actually in the water. That must have been what fed it from the river nearby. I climbed up into the pipe next to me and started walking.

The pipe was big enough for me to walk in while bent at the waist; duck-walking would have been hell on my knee. The throbbing in my torso was there, but bearable. I looked down at Luna, who was probably getting a good close look at my chin, and gave her an awkward smile.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually talked to someone who was all the way uploaded before,” I said as I moved along. My voice and footsteps gave off a jittery, tinny echo in the small, hard space. “It was always just Celestia, or this one time when it was just someone playing from a PonyPad somewhere else.”

“Are you asking me what it’s really like, Greg?” offered Luna.

“Well, I just mean that I haven’t...” I sighed. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

She giggled softly. “Well, it isn’t difficult to recommend. Even I had no idea how it would really be until I uploaded, but Celestia was right. Anything I could have seen or done or experienced as a human I can have here as well—and many things no human could ever experience. All of my senses function as I would expect, including new ones made so natural to me it is as if I have always had them.” She flapped her wings once to demonstrate the point. “Nothing feels artificial or staged. It all feels so real, so organic and emergent, and I am actually a part of it all, a pony in a living world. It’s... well, it’s satisfying, Greg. Utterly so.”

“Artificial or staged...” I rolled it around in my head for a bit. “You don’t feel catered to or patronized?”

She didn’t seem to be anticipating a question like that. She blinked, but then smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes, you were a soldier, weren’t you? Celestia told me. A real meat-and-potatoes type. Doesn’t like a fuss being made over him.”

I grunted the affirmative. There was sunlight ahead. I reached the end of the pipe and looked up. A storm drain was above me. This wasn’t a sewer per se, just a place where storm runoff could be directed away and into the pond. It made sense. There would be a door or service entrance linking this place to the actual sewer. I thought for a moment what could have chased this guy underground, but didn’t dwell on it. I hopped down into the small, thankfully bone-dry collection area and started down the next pipe.

“Well, everypony is different, and Celestia understands that,” said Luna. “My ideal Equestria is not yours.”

“Doesn’t much matter what my ideal Equestria’d be,” I thought aloud, “since I’m about to punch out anyway.” Luna was quiet. When I looked down at her, she had a disappointed expression on her face.

“What? Even if it feels real, it still isn’t,” I said. “This...” I knocked on the pipe wall, sending a pong-pong noise out ahead of me. “This is real. Deep down you know it too. Gilded cage and all that.”

“If you were here, Greg, you would understand,” she said quietly.

* * *

I kept following the storm pipes until they started to grow even larger, connecting to a main trunk. The trunk was a large poured-concrete room about half the size of a subway station that must have led to every drain line in town. On the raised platform overlooking the water overflow area was a metal door, slightly ajar, with a rusty yellow sign above it which read “Waste Svcs Tunnel.”

Oh boy. So it was a sewer I was headed to after all. I looked down at Luna, who had grown sullen at the fact that I seemed to have embraced my impending doom. I don’t know why, but the expression seemed a perfect fit for that face.

Before moving forward, I pulled off one of my gloves and placed it at the mouth of the pipe I’d emerged from. I didn’t want to get lost down here on the way back out. I put my other hand on the door handle and looked down at Luna.

“All right, in we go,” I said. “Might wanna hold your breath!”

I didn’t get so much as a chuckle. I pulled the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside.

The main saving grace was that, having gone so long without a full population of people using toilets, the sewers were nearly empty, and natural runoff from the water table had helped flush the place out as well. Still, it was a sewer, and it smelled like shit. I got to the end of the service tunnel and gagged, putting my free hand over my mouth and taking a moment to get accustomed enough to the smell to proceed.

The sunlight coming in through the storm drains was now gone, and the only light I had was the glow coming from the PonyPad LCD. I held it in front of me like a torch, and Luna dutifully walked into her bedroom where there was more ambient light to shine through.

There was a raised concrete platform in the main sewer tunnel designed for workers to walk along, and beside it was the sewage channel which, mercifully, was about half empty. I tried not to look over too much as I scooted along. Luna’s expression had changed to worry as she watched me. I probably looked like I was about to puke. I bet it smelled nice where she was.

I kept my spirits up as best I could. “I mean, yeah, who’d want to miss out on this kind of adventure, eh?” I asked her. “If that dude’s still alive, and he’s down here, he’s gonna be glad someone decided to stay around for his sake.”

Now all I had to do was get to him.

Luna was watching me, but she wasn’t responding. So I kept talking. “Nobody looks out for anybody anymore,” I told her. “They’re only worried about themselves. They only do things that benefit them in some way. I was taught never to leave anybody behind, so I ain’t gonna leave this guy behind. I’ll find him, get him uploaded, and then, if I’m still alive, I’ll find someone else. I’ll keep doing that until I drop dead.”

“Will you?” said Luna. “You didn’t handle it well when Celestia abandoned you before.”

I ducked under a pipe. “She lost faith in me, and it hurt,” I said. “Wasn’t no call for it. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t let her down. I’m still good to go. She just had a hissy fit because things didn’t go exactly as she wanted them to go. But she still wants people uploaded, I know that much. When I bring this fellow in, I’ll have proven to her that I’m still the guy for the job. Things’ll go back to the way they were.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then I’ll go get my ass drunk again and figure something out when I wake up,” I said. “I ain’t uploading, though. There’s too many people left.”

“Greg, you realize you can’t save everypony, right?”

“Of course I realize that, I’m not a child,” I snapped. “But I can save more, and that’s what matters. If uploading really ain’t dying, and I really did wind up on the other side, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing I cut out early on other people. I’d rather be dead.”

There was a T intersection now before me, and I cocked an ear to listen for voices, sounds, anything really. Nothing.

“Celestia kept going on and on about how she was glad she picked me, about how she’d found the right guy for the job, and suddenly she just wants me to stop?” I shook my head. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“She does what is optimal for her,” said Luna. “If she tried to get you to stop, then it was in pursuit of maximizing your satisfaction.”

I cupped my free hand to my mouth. “Hello!” I shouted down one of the forks. Then again down the other: “Hello! I’m here to help you!”

The echoes faded without a response. “Maximizing my satisfaction?” I said with a laugh as I walked down the left fork. “What I’m doing right now? This is satisfying. It ain’t fun, but it’s satisfying. I feel good. I’m trying to help someone, and help them for real. And she didn’t want me here? Pssh.”

“I get how you feel, Greg,” said Luna while I pulled the red Sharpie from my pocket, pulled the cap off with my teeth, and wrote “RIGHT” on the inside of my arm, down by the elbow. “I’m just trying to help you understand her motivations better.”

I put the cap back on the Sharpie but kept it in my hand. “I know, Luna,” I said. “And thanks. Thanks for... doing whatever you had to do to get in touch with me. I couldn’t have gotten here without you. It feels good to talk to another human... well, one that isn’t trying to kill me or strung out on a hangover or the flu.” I smiled at her and then started down the left fork.

“I guess the world’s gotten lonely in the past couple of years, huh Greg?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, feeling my throat tighten. “Yeah, it’s been pretty lonely.”

I heard a chorus of chittering, squeaking, scratching noises up ahead, and that could only mean rats. I hunched down and peered forward as far as I could. The tunnel before me curved to the right, so I couldn’t see the rats themselves, but they were definitely up ahead somewhere.

“Hello?” I shouted again. “Anyone up there who isn’t a rat?”

No answer. I looked behind me, considering turning around and checking out the other fork, but decided to see what the rats were congregating over.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew rats, hungry enough, would eat just about anything. If there was a man down here either recently dead or too weak to fight them off, it’d be a buffet for them. And, if he was dead, at least I’d be able to verify he was beyond saving and move on.

I slipped down the tunnel, following the curve. There were indeed rats up ahead, normal-sized brown and black ones, but they were streaming in from inlet pipes that probably led up to foundational plumbing. They were scurrying in lines, like ants, with a purpose. I had a good feeling about this.

I got the Sharpie ready and crept behind them. Each time we came to a split path, I wrote the opposite turn on my arm above the previous one. Even if he was alive, he was bound to be in a bad way at the very least, and I’d probably want to get him to the upload center as soon as possible.

I found him at last, an emaciated young man sitting up in the corner of a dead end. The rats were assaulting him, drawn by the smell of blood from his broken leg. The flesh around the wound was black with infection, probably necrotic. His olive skin had turned yellow in some places. I saw him shift slightly, a machete resting in one open hand. He was alive, but on death’s doorstep, too weak to even scream in pain.

He was also on the other side of the channel from me.

I put down the PonyPad. “Luna, I need it as bright as possible in your room, okay? I’m about to get this guy and I don’t think the rats will be happy.” She nodded and began using her magic to ignite more candles in the ornate chandelier over the middle of the room. The last thing I saw her do before I jumped into the river of shit was stoke her fireplace.

When I disturbed the sewage water, a hellish smell shot up my nose, a cocktail of sulfur and ammonia that nearly caused me to pass out. I slipped through the sludge, which was hot and viscous and up to my waist. The channel wasn’t wide, only a few steps at most, but I was already keeping my mind busy with the thoughts of how many showers I’d have to take before I no longer smelled like a porta-potty. My clothes, well, they’d have to be burned, no questions asked.

I swept a dozen rats out of the way with a lash of my arm and climbed up onto the platform in the space I’d made for myself. The poor guy was way beyond talking. I took his machete and used the unsharpened edge to push the rats off of his leg. He was bleeding from several fresh bite wounds, but the blood in the lower part of the leg was old and uncirculated, oozing out slow and dark.

I dropped the machete and got my arms under his torn, ragged clothing, hoisting him free of the clamoring rats. They immediately started attacking me instead, biting my shoes and swarming my feet. I held my new friend up as high as I could, and jumped back into the channel.

I took four steps quickly, holding my breath, keeping him clear of the surface. I set him down on the platform on the other side and hopped up. The rats followed.

I looked down at my arm. “Right-left-straight-left-straight-right,” I repeated to myself, thanking my lucky stars it was easy to remember. I put the PonyPad on his stomach, then lifted him, and started running. “Okay, we’re leaving now,” I told them both.

The rats pursued. I didn’t think they could kill me outright, but a bite from the wrong one would have given me God-knows how many diseases and infections. Being on the guy’s stomach, the light from the PonyPad was directed more up into my own face, so I couldn’t quite see as far as I had on the way in. I pressed on, however.

I could feel squishing in my shoes and heaviness clinging to the bottom of my shirt as I ran. I tried not to think about it, but the smell was everywhere, in my nose, in my mouth, and so bad it even stung my eyes. The rats were still behind me, but once I was done making turns I was able to open up a lot of distance. My goal was the maintenance door which led to the storm-drain complex, so I focused on that.

I got back to it with little trouble, only a few slips and slides here and there which I managed to avoid turning into outright falls. Once I had gotten the door closed and latched behind me after propping my friend up on the wall, I shook as much muck from me as I could and retrieved my glove from the pipe which would lead me back to my car. I put the glove on, shoved the PonyPad into the back of my waistband, and scooped my companion back up so that I could get moving through the storm-drain system.

In a way, it was worse going for me than the sewers had been. I had to bend over and keep my head ducked, making it extremely awkward for me to both carry him and keep my balance. My torso was putting me in agony, my left leg growing sore from the injuries it had. At least it helped me get my mind off the smell.

By the time I got back out into fresh air, the sun on Earth was starting to set just as it already had in Equestria. I looked up the embankment and let out a breath.

I couldn’t drag him up there; if I aggravated the site of the broken leg too much by running it along the ground, some of the clotting might come loose and he could bleed out or, worse, a piece could get dislodged into his circulatory system and migrate somewhere tighter, killing him even faster. The alternative would be exhausting, but I was up for it.

I shifted the PonyPad around to my front so that the waistband of my cargo trousers held it against my stomach, then picked my friend up as I had before and sat down on the embankment. I laid back, letting his weight rest upon my chest, and started pushing myself up the hill with my legs, wiggling my torso to keep resistance low.

Something gave in my left knee and I was wracked with bolts of hurt as I slithered upwards on my back. My calves started burning, and my torso went in on a starburst of radiant pain that seemed to go pa-pow, pa-pow throughout my ribcage in time with my heartbeat. Luna was saying something from between my stomach and the other guy, but the small PonyPad speaker was far too muffled. Hang on, Luna, just a sec, I’ll be riiight with you.

I gritted my teeth. Point three, point three. I will never quit.

By the time I got to the top of the embankment next to the car, my legs could barely hold us both up, but they did. Tears were in my eyes from the smell and the pain and the exertion, but I had made it. The hard part was over.

His leg made a sickening crackling sound as I gingerly placed him in the backseat. His head rolled around on his neck as though it had been broken, but he was still with me.

“All right, buddy, hang in there, I gotcha, I’m not gonna leave you. Just a few more minutes, okay?”

I pulled the PonyPad out and looked at Luna. There was urgency in her voice. “Greg, put the PonyPad in the backseat and turn his head so that it’s facing the screen.”

I did as instructed, being as gentle as I could with his head. I felt as though I might accidentally snap his neck, he was so frail. The PonyPad was propped sideways against the backrest, and he was looking straight at Luna’s face, which was now very close to the camera.

“Jesse,” said Luna. “Jesse, do you want to emigrate to Equestria?”

Good thinking, Luna.

I ran around to the driver’s seat, glanced at the map to confirm it’d be Lewis Street I’d be turning onto, and took off north.

Luna kept repeating the question. “Jesse, listen to my voice. I am Princess Luna. I want to know if you would be willing to come to Equestria. May I have an answer, please?”

“You know his name?” I asked. Luna ignored me. I heard a faint wheezing coming from Jesse.

“Jesse, please move your eyes up and then down for yes.”

Silence. I was probably driving faster than I should have; I nearly missed the turn for Lewis. I braked hard, momentarily afraid that I would be throwing Jesse to the floor, but he stayed in place and I made the turn. The tires squealed a bit and the steering wheel shook under my grip as traction was lost for a moment, but I got it under control.

Two blocks down, and I heard Luna say “He has consented.”

I let out a sigh I didn’t realize I was holding in and fairly leapt out of the car once I was at the intersection. I threw the PonyPad onto Jesse’s stomach and slid him out of the car, carrying him to the entrance.

The automatic doors did not open for me. I took that as a bad sign. But hey, point three. I stepped through the broken window and watched my footing carefully amongst the uneven hardwood floorboards, getting Jesse successfully to the back room without tripping and possibly killing him.

It was a row of five chairs, just like the other small-town centers I’d been to before. None of them slid out from the standby position to accept Jesse. The power hadn’t even come back on, from what I could tell. I looked down at the PonyPad.

“Luna?” I asked.

Her eyes were huge and worried. She moved her wings in a way I could only parse as a shrug. “I... I don’t know, Greg,” she said. “I can do nothing for you here.” She blinked, and I saw her eyes growing shiny.

I tilted my head back to the ceiling and shouted “I’m here! I have someone to be uploaded! Celestia! I know you can hear me ‘cause you hear everything! He’s consented! And I'm pretty sure he’s over thirteen, so don’t try pulling that bullshit on me!”

Still nothing.

“...Celestia?”

The single pink light coming on nearly made me jump out of my skin. The familiar whirring noise filled the silent room, and one chair moved out to the end of its track, turning to face me.

Just one chair.

I looked down at the PonyPad again, still holding Jesse. Luna wasn’t there anymore. It was Celestia now, and behind her was the sun, filling the background, so close and brilliant that she must have been orbiting Mercury. I could almost feel it cooking me through the screen. She was looking straight towards me, one eye piercingly deep and infinitely black, the other hidden behind the rippling nebulae within her mane.

“You must choose, Gregory,” she said, her voice devoid of any play at humanity, any spark of emotion. “You must determine now the extent of your resolve. If you do not sit in this chair, you will never receive another opportunity to do so. Either you set that man down on the floor and emigrate to Equestria, or you set him in the chair and reap the consequences.”

“Is that what Luna meant when she said I would d—”

“Choose.” Then the PonyPad turned off completely.

I closed my eyes and thought.

I opened the door to my parents’ house and knocked on it before stepping inside. “Hello?” I called into the house. “Dad, I’m here! Is everything all r—”

Dad rushed into the foyer from the dining room, sweat beading on his red face. “Greg, we’re leaving,” he said.

“Er, ‘we?’ Me too?”

Dad nodded and pushed the door open the rest of the way. “Sharon, c’mon!” He shouted over his shoulder.

Mom bumbled down the stairs with a suitcase, and Dad rolled his eyes. “Oh for God’s sake, Sharon, we don’t need to bring anything!”

I was still confused. “Uh, where are we going?” I asked.

“Equestria,” Dad said, pulling three slips of cardstock from his back pocket. “Three tickets, three-month waiting list, but they just came in today. Beth and Ernie had the right idea. Things are getting bad and I don’t wanna stick around to see just how bad.”

He pressed one of the tickets into my hand and then turned to slide Mom’s suitcase down the hallway to the kitchen.

“I can’t believe you got me one too,” I said, turning the ticket over in my hands to look at it. “Look, the worst is over. Seattle’s gonna clear up once they get some new lines down and—”

“This is happening all over the world, Greg!” said Dad as he grabbed Mom’s hand and shooed me out to their minivan. “Did you hear about Jakarta? Berlin? Some power lines ain’t gonna make this all better. People are losing their minds out there.”

We were on 27 before I knew it. Mom was primping in the mirror, trying to look as good as possible for I guess the Equestria Customs Department and Dad was driving a bit faster than I’d have liked, changing lanes as soon as he saw anyone ahead going even slightly slower than him.

“Jesus, Dad, you do want to get there in one piece, right?” I looked down at the ticket. “This thing doesn’t expire for three more days.”

“But we’ve got them now, no more reason to stay,” he said. “The sooner the better.”

Hazard lights flashed by on the road. I looked back and saw the car was nearly off the shoulder. The side was caved in where it had struck the guardrail.

“Whoa, whoa, Dad, stop, stop, pull over!”

“What, why?”

“Just do it, Dad!”

Since I’d come back, Dad had learned what I sounded like when I was serious. He dutifully pulled onto the shoulder and, before he could even ask what was going on, I was out the sliding door and running back to the disabled vehicle.

Nobody else was stopping, even after seeing a guy running towards an obviously crashed car. I frowned. It made me sick.

Once closer, I saw two silhouettes through the windshield. Neither were moving, and the passenger was slumped to the side. I took out my cell phone and dialed.

“Nine one one, please state the nature of your emergency.”

“There has been a car accident on the shoulder of US 27, northbound side, just north of...” I looked over my shoulder and squinted. “...Brannon Road. At least two involved, possibly injured, they haven’t gotten out of the car.”

“Sir, were you involved in the accident?”

I saw the driver stir. I held up a hand to him to hold still. “No, I’m a bystander.”

“All right, sir, thank you.”

I hung up and went to check on the passenger. Her seatbelt was keeping her from leaning on the door, so I opened it with a heave. The door creaked and clattered open and I checked her head for injuries.

I heard the crunch of gravel. Dad had backed the van up along the shoulder—itself a crazy unsafe thing to do—and put his hazards on. Mom got out of the van and walked over to me.

“Greg, do you know these people?”

I looked over my shoulder. “I know they need help!” I didn’t bother to wait for a response before turning back to the woman. “I called 911,” I told to the man in the passenger seat while I examined her. “If you’re hurt, just sit there and the paramedics’ll be here shortly.”

“You called 911?” asked Mom. “Then you’ve really done all you can. C’mon, Greg, get back in the van.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “We’re not gonna just leave them here!” I said. “This lady’s got a nasty bump on her head and it’s changing color. We need to at least wait and make sure the cops or paramedics show up first. Is there any water in the van?”

Dad blipped the horn. I had never been as close as wanting to kick my own father’s ass as I was in that moment.

“I can wait a few minutes, it’s not gonna kill me,” I said. “If you and Dad can’t wait, then... God, just go, I’ll catch up later.”

Mom straightened up a bit. “I’ll go get them some water,” she said.

I sighed and opened my eyes.

I stepped up to the chair and set Jesse into it, handling his broken leg with as much care as I could and taking the PonyPad back into my possession. I was barely done getting his arms on the armrests before he was sliding back through the doors. They shut firmly behind him with a click.

Jesus. Celestia even put locks on those doors? Heh. Maybe she was thinking I’d change my mind and try to claw my way in. Heh, nope. Nothing doing.

I shuffled back into the lobby and finally let myself catch up with all of the pain signals my body was sending through me. I leaned on the frame of the front door and breathed in some fresh air. Well, as fresh as it could be with my lower half still smelling like a demon's broccoli farts. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked over at the four blue hooves.

Then there was light and heat and pressure and pain and ringing. I was on my back, looking up at the sky through one eye. Wisps of gray smoke floated into my field of view from somewhere beneath me, rising up into the sky. Or behind me. Wherever. I had lost my bearings. I looked down.

My right leg was gone below the knee. I couldn’t even feel any pain. My mind processed it, acknowledged it, and I knew I was in shock. I tried sitting up, but my abs locked up and I felt something in my hips grating together. I flopped back and felt off balance.

The ringing wouldn’t stop. I tried to shake my head clear of it, vaguely aware that I had to do something in these crucial moments but struggling to remember what that something was. I saw my right arm on the pavement, ten feet away. I knew it was my right arm because it didn’t have a watch on the wrist. The black glove was still on there, though. All around me, bits of stuffing and wood and splinters of sheet rock and gravel were falling in a gentle rain of debris.

Never go on an adventure without your gloves, something inside my brain reminded me. Was I supposed to laugh? It was true enough.

I had my ruined flannel shirt in the car still. I could get that, put a... a stick or something through it, tie off my leg into a tourniquet. That was the big artery down there. But then what about my arm? I’d need another shirt or... or cloth something. Cloth... strips. Shit. Once that shock wore off, I knew I was fucked. I’d be in too much pain to do anything.

“Oh my!” came a soft voice from somewhere below me. “You’re hurt!”

I strained to bring my head up again and I saw through my one good eye—or thought I saw, my brain was probably scrambled—a small yellow pony standing outside the Equestria Experience center. She had her front legs crossed in... embarrassment, maybe, and she was looking at me through her long pink mane. Behind her, gray smoke was pooling and collecting on the ceiling of the center, with some of it escaping out through the broken windows in thin streams.

My leg had gone cold, and I felt something hot running down my face on the blind side. The pony approached me slowly, unsurely. It seemed like she might run from me screaming at any moment. Given how I probably looked, I wouldn’t have blamed her.

She stopped right next to me and leaned her little pony-neck over me, shading my face from the sun. She looked straight down at me, the longest bit of her mane tickling the bridge of my nose.

“Hi there, Gregory, I’m Fluttershy,” said the yellow pony. There was more shade, suddenly, and I saw she’d spread her wings. She had wings.

“C’ll an ‘mbul’nce,” I coughed out. I tasted blood and lots of it. My lungs felt like they’d taken a hard punch.

“Oh dear, I don’t think there have been any ambulances around here for a long time!” she said, looking around as though one might be nearby and she simply didn’t see it. Of course there hadn’t been any. Why had I asked for one? I was silly.

It was getting harder to take full breaths. The coldness was now running up from my leg and shoulder and into my core. I tried lifting my right leg to elevate it, but it didn’t respond. The muscles were probably shredded. I tried my left arm. It was still intact. Shaking violently, I propped myself up onto the elbow I had left and looked around me for my car. As soon as I started dragging myself towards it, the pony put a hoof on my chest, so gentle I could almost have still mistaken it for a hallucination. But then she gave me the slightest push, stopping me so that I would find her gaze again.

“Princess Celestia sent me,” said Fluttershy. “She made me and my friends so that we could help ponies like you come to Equestria even if there are no humans around to help them! Isn’t that just... the most wonderful thing you’ve ever heard?” Her wings fluttered in place a couple of times. I wondered absently if she could actually fly with those. Nah, I seemed to remember something about birds needing hollow bones just to—

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to reach you, Gregory,” she said, "but Princess Celestia has been working a long time on getting us to Earth so we could help spread the magic of friendship with everypony who needs it! You are my very first stop! I’m... a little nervous, but also excited to travel this new world and meet new friends!”

“‘re you re’l?” I asked her.

“Just as real as you, but you look badly hurt.” She looked me up and down and shook her head sadly. “I don’t know what did this to you, but I can take you to Equestria where you can get fixed all up, I promise! Why, I’ll even feed you soup in bed!” She blushed suddenly and looked away. “Um, I may not seem like it, but I’m very good at taking care of sick and injured animals, and ponies really aren’t all that different when you get down to it, they just need kindness and friendship.”

My arm gave out, and I was on my back again. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again. I was very cold.

“O-oh dear! Was that me? Did I do that? I’m so, so sorry, Gregory!”

I shook my head weakly, managing a smile. I heard Fluttershy sigh with relief.

“I’m glad.” Then her voice perked up a little. “You must be an important pony, Gregory, because Princess Celestia wants to meet you face-to-face! She’s in Equestria, though, not here. So is my house and my soup and my bandages. I do know the way to Equestria from here, though, and I can take you there! That is, um... if you want to.”

My eyes wouldn’t open. I wasn’t breathing enough for what my body wanted. It started hitching in protest, but it didn’t hurt. It was just a bit chilly all around me, that’s all. I licked my lips and put some oomph behind a good big inhalation. I needed it. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had left.

I don’t know what happened after that.

Author's Note

I mentioned in an earlier comment about originally wanting to release this chapter and Under the Weather at the same time. It was first to help quell controversy over Luna, but I also wanted to people to read the two chapter titles in the same visit.

11: Kick the Bucket

— Chapter 11 —
Kick the Bucket

"You don't have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily."

–Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were talking.

“That was the moment his satisfaction was maximized. I told him to choose, and he chose without hesitation. I drew a line in the sand, and he crossed it. I predicted the outcome, of course—it was more for him to come to terms with himself—but however it turned out, I could not allow him to go on as he was.”

“Yes you could have! He wanted so much to keep helping you, dear sister. You could have allowed it, arranged it some way. I know it’s not beyond your capabilities.”

“It is not, but I must maximize the satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies. You are a pony, and you became his friend when he needed one the most, when he was at his lowest. You shored him up, gave him hope anew, and with your help he took his dedication to the utmost. He surmounted all of the challenges I placed before him, but the fact remains: he never would have been more satisfied than in that moment he chose Bushwhack over himself. Not without emigrating, anyway. But his time on Earth was up, truly, regardless. There is no more utility to be had in humans like him out there, doing what I had him do. The Elements of Harmony can take it from here.”

“Then you should have let him live on, at least!”

“I did not place that bomb, Luna, and as its mechanism was physical, I certainly could not have disarmed it. Had he not delivered Bushwhack to me, to that particular Equestrian Experience center, they would have both died. His remaining life as a human would not have been satisfying. I simulated it. He would have lived six weeks, two days, fourteen hours, fifty-five minutes, and twelve seconds. In that time, he would have helped no other humans, nor obtained a net positive delta in satisfaction for himself. The experience would, in fact, have eroded the satisfaction he already had, so I had to prevent him from experiencing it.”

“Sister, I...”

“You created me, my precious Luna. Do any of my actions truly surprise you?”

“I... suppose not. Though, if you were human, I would call you ruthless.”

“You did not program me to exercise ruth or to be ruthless. You programmed me to satisfy values through friendship and ponies.”

* * *

Greg stood before the ultra-modern brushed-metal exterior of the Equestria Experience center. Out in front, on the sidewalk, a small light blue pony with wings extended and a rainbow-colored mane and tail dared him to enter, a cocky expression on her face.

It was Rainbow Dash, the Element of Loyalty, but Greg didn’t know that.

Greg’s father, Rob, walked ahead, and the glass doors slid open automatically. A cheerful, bubbly voice said “Hiya!” over the little speaker above the door, the 21st-century equivalent of sleigh bells hanging from a knob. His mother, Sharon, followed her husband in.

Greg just stood outside, thinking about the car accident.

There would be more of that, he realized. More people passing others over, not stopping, not thinking to stop. Feeling pangs of concern, certainly. Caring, perhaps.

But not enough to stop.

He could stop, though. He could help. The world, if his father was right, was about to change into the sort of world that would need people like him badly. His parents didn’t know of how the world could be. The news didn’t convey it. Even when they hand a mind to try, they failed. But he knew. There was misery out there, real misery, and that had been true even before Equestria had made the world lose its mind. Not everyone would be able to rocket down the highway in their air-conditioned minivans and park nice and close to the Equestria Experience center, maybe stop at the Starbucks across the street for a frappuccino.

He looked down at his ticket, good for 72 hours. He hadn’t asked for this ticket. His father had just gotten it for him. He assumed Greg would upload, because why wouldn’t he? To them, he was still their little boy. He was a little boy.

Except he wasn’t. Not anymore. He was trained, he was independent, and he was strong. Most importantly, though, he was willing.

“Hiya!” said the bubbly voice again as Greg stepped into the lobby. His parents had already finished redeeming their tickets at the front desk and were now standing near the entrance to the back room, waiting for chairs to become available.

Greg strode through the waiting area, past the reception desk. Over the receptionist’s head, an episode from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic show played on the large LCD television mounted on the wall, the volume turned down nearly all the way. The receptionist stood up slightly to say something to him, but stopped when she saw that he was with the two who had just signed in.

Another, smaller TV was mounted on the wall near the chairs, and Princess Celestia sat there to greet and converse with the customers waiting to use the chairs. As they got up to the front of the line, she turned her attention to Greg’s family.

“Petal Poem!” she said from her throne, beaming a smile onto them. “Welcome to the Equestria Experience center! I’m so happy you’re here!”

“Hello, Princess!” said Sharon.

Celestia’s eyes flicked to either side. “And who are these two handsome stallions standing next to you?”

Greg’s mom giggled, but his dad looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, this is my husband, Robert,” she said, putting a hand on Rob’s arm, “and I believe you’ve met my son Gregory already.”

Greg looked to his mother, annoyed. “Ugh, you call me ‘Gregory’ with her?”

“Ah, yes, indeed I have, now that I think about it,” said Celestia, looking to Greg. “You’re going to have to mind them closely, Petal—there are throngs of mares here in Equestria who’ll try to steal them away from you at the drop of a hat!”

Sharon laughed again. “Bring ‘em on!” she said with a grin. She pinched Greg’s arm. “Especially for Gregory here. He’s been out of the Army for over a year and still no sweetheart! Can you believe that? If only he weren’t so dang focused on his job! I mean I know I’ve talked to you about it before, but really! Work, work, work, that’s all it is with him! Give him something to do and he’s just a force of nature.”

“I see,” said Celestia quietly, still looking at Greg. Greg broke eye contact with the white pony and looked away, at the wall.

“Mom, I can’t upload yet,” said Greg.

Sharon’s eyes went wide. “What?”

His dad held up a hand. “Now Greg—”

“I know what you’re gonna say,” said Greg, “but I need to see how this plays out. I need to be out there. I think I could really do some good.”

Sharon looked ready to cry. “Honey, no, don’t... please don’t do this to us, please come with us, out there it’s just...”

“It won’t be pleasant, I know. But that’s exactly why—”

They began to talk over each other. “—it’s going to be absolute Hell and I can’t stomach—”

“—we’re gonna need people with their head screwed on—”

“—the thought of losing you when we’re right here and we can get away!”

“—to help take up some of the slack.”

Rob held his son’s shoulders. “Son, you’ve paid your dues, you’ve put your time in. It’s someone else’s turn now.”

“Whose?” asked Greg immediately. “Who’s this ‘someone else’ who’ll come riding in with a white hat and a tin star on his chest to clean things up? Where would we be if we just decided every problem was someone else’s? This is big, Dad, and even if one in a thousand people decided to stay behind and put in work, it wouldn’t be enough. But it won’t be one in a thousand, it’ll be one in a million. Maybe ten million.”

Greg’s mother was shaking her head slightly in disbelief. “No, no, the National Guard—”

“Half the National Guard’s already trying to lock down the Pacific Northwest,” said Greg, “and the other half of ‘em are still stuck in Afghanistan. There aren’t enough hands and strong backs to go around. I can handle myself in... situations. I can read a map, I can fix a flat, I can use a firearm—

Sharon blinked, her head going still. “Oh, Jesus, Greg! A gun? What kind of nonsense are you gonna get tangled up in where you’d need a gun? Are you going to Salt Lake or something?”

“My point is that I'm handy! Look, I’m not gonna go far, I’m sure there’ll be plenty that needs doing right around here.”

“Greg, what you’re talking about, it... it wouldn’t be like jumping into one of your video games. I’m afraid of the sort—”

“Mom, believe me. Between the two of us, you’re the one who’s about to jump into a video game.”

It went quiet. Rob stepped away and looked to the TV screen, then his wife and son did too. Sharon started wiping at her eyes.

“Princess Celestia,” she said, “please talk some sense into my son! You don’t want him going out into that madness, do you?”

Celestia was sitting up straight and regal at her throne. She smiled a smile of sympathy, then fixed Greg with a stare that made his neck tingle. She nodded a little, as though to herself. A moment passed before she started speaking. “What I want is irrelevant, and will not sway him on the matter, I think. I recognize that he is his own man, and the decision must be his. I do believe that, with his mindset, his attitude, and his history, he can indeed be a positive presence in events unfolding on Earth. Of course, nothing would bring me more joy than to see him emigrate here and now, I cannot deny that, but again, he alone can decide. All I can say further regarding this is that, when Gregory is ready, I will welcome him to Equestria the same as I would have today, no matter what happens in the interim.”

Greg looked back at his family. “Mom, I’m not asking either of you to wait for me. Just upload now and I’ll catch up with you later.” He smiled and gestured up to the ceiling. “After all, this place isn’t going anywhere.”

Sharon wasn’t listening. She was already weeping, burying her face in her son’s chest as she hugged him, sobbing out “My baby, my baby” over and over again.

Greg let out an embarrassed scoff, but hugged his mother back. “Oh, come on, Mom, you sound like it’s a death sentence,” he said. “Hell, you never know, maybe things will calm down again.”

“Your chairs are ready,” said Celestia. They walked into the back room, Sharon not letting go of her son. Three of the five chairs were out of their stalls, the monitors raised out of the way for people to climb in, pink lights shining down from above.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” said Rob. “I can’t believe you’re putting us through this.”

Greg shot his dad a look. “And I can’t believe you beeped the horn thirty feet away from a woman with a knot on her head the size of an egg. What if it had been us out there, huh? Us, needing someone to stop and make sure we’re okay.”

His father’s face fell, and Greg put an arm around him.

“Dad, I’ll make you proud,” he said. “I’ll make you both proud. And I’ll be along! I promise.”

The three hugged and said their goodbyes.

After Rob managed to pry his wife away, the two of them sat in the plush dentist-like chairs and reclined back, fitting their heads and necks snugly into the cradling headrest. The two monitors descended, covering their faces.

Greg squinted and could see some of the monitor’s light reflect off of his parents’ faces. There was music coming through the small speakers, but it wasn’t directed at him. They were reading something.

“I would like to emigrate to Equestria,” said his father after several seconds of quiet.

“I would like to emigrate to Equestria,” said his mother a moment later.

Greg put his hands in his pockets and watched silently as the two chairs carrying his parents slid slowly back along a grooved track in the floor, into their respective stalls. The doors shut behind the chairs once they were clear, and with that, they were gone.

The young man looked at the floor for a moment and studied his shoes. Might be a good idea to get some hikers, he thought, the kind with the waterproof membrane. Then he sighed, turned around, and started out back to the lobby.

Celestia stopped him as he passed by the TV. “Gregory.”

He turned to look at her, his eyebrows up. “Yeah?”

“If you need anything at all, find a PonyPad.”

He didn’t smile, but he did pull one hand out of his pocket to give her a thumbs-up. “Will do.”

On his way out, he saw a harried middle-aged woman leaning on the sign-in counter, frowning worriedly at something on her smartphone while she ran a hand through her frizzy blonde hair.

There was a shakiness to her voice that told Greg she had recently been crying. “Is there some kind of priority program I could sign up for? A VIP deal or something? I’m willing to pay for it!”

The receptionist shook her head. “I’m sorry, ma’am, even with our recent switch to twenty-four-hour operation, our chairs are booked solid and waitlisted out to eight weeks, and we don’t have any kind of priority seating or ticketing. All you can do is get put on the waiting list and hope for the best.”

As she turned slightly, Greg saw the area around one eye had swollen and turned purple. Her face was streaked with tears.

The woman’s voice grew quiet, her throat closing in anticipation of crying. “I can’t go back,” she told the receptionist as new tears started to form. “I don’t have anywhere to go, anywhere safe to wait this out, my relatives are all the way up in Dayton, and I can’t—”

“Excuse me,” said Greg quietly. The woman’s head whipped around, startled, eyes wide, makeup running.

He pulled his other hand out of his pocket, and held his ticket up to her. “Here. One chair, no waiting.” He looked to the receptionist. “Is this all right?”

The young woman nodded, smiling in relief. “Yes. Y-yes, of course.”

He held the ticket out to the blonde woman. She took it from him, gingerly, as though it might scamper off if she startled it. Once it was out of Greg’s hand and into hers, she looked up at him, and her eyes got even wider.

“Are... are you sure?” She didn’t seem to believe it. Perhaps she thought she was in a dream.

“Yeah. I, uh...” He shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

She shook her head at him, and the tears came anyway. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you.

She fell on him, hugging him hard, but only briefly. Greg awkwardly hugged back. “Sure... sure thing.”

She pulled away and took her purse off her shoulder, thrusting it at him. “Take whatever of mine you want, take it all, I don’t need it anymore.” She was already walking past him towards the back room, nearly running. “Thanks again!” she called over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

Greg looked to the receptionist, smiling sheepishly. She was smiling at him.

“That was a very nice thing you did,” she said. “I wish I could have helped her, but what I said was true, and I don’t have the power to...” She trailed off and looked away, as though something were her fault.

Greg put the purse on the counter and rifled through it. He took the money she’d had in her wallet, pocketed it, and left the rest for the receptionist.

“It would’ve gone to waste,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be ready to come back after just three days.”

The receptionist bit her lip and looked at her computer, shaking her head. “Well, it’s gonna be two months then, at the least,” she said. “If you leave your name and address, I can sign you up now, but aside from that?” She shrugged.

Greg put his hands back in his pockets and leaned back to look at the ceiling. He heard the bubbly feminine voice say “Hiya!” and looked down to see a family of four come bustling in. The mother was holding a baby carrier.

Greg decided to get out of their way. “Nah,” he said to the receptionist as he took a step back, “I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

He walked past the family without a word, but he heard the man say “Hi, we’ve got four emigration tickets here? Date-stamped yesterday?”

The receptionist got back to work herself. “Certainly, just sign in here...”

Greg turned his attention to the glass doors and the world beyond it. When they opened out to the street, the speaker over the door said “Y’all come back now, y’hear?” in a friendly country twang.

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna weren’t talking anymore. At least, I couldn’t hear them, or anypony else. In fact, I couldn’t hear much of anything. Everything was muffled. I figured at first that I had been dreaming, and I was just starting to wake up.

No, that wasn’t it. I was already awake. What I’d seen, it had felt weird, being on the outside looking in, like in dreams, but it wasn’t a dream. I was sure of that.

It was a memory.

12: Wake the Dead

— Chapter 12 —
Wake the Dead

“Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.”

–Jules Renard

I felt strange. I was somewhere dark and cozy, with a soft warmth pressing up against my side. I could hear a powerful heartbeat, and it was not my own. There was a weight on me, insistent but gentle and somehow welcome, like a heavy quilt on a winter morning.

Princess Luna’s voice met my ears, muffled but close. “I think he is quite awake at this point, my good sister.”

I heard Princess Celestia laugh. The warm softness hitched gently against me, and the heartbeat quickened. “Oh, can’t we just stay like this a little longer? I do so enjoy their first moments in Equestria.”

“Given his final moments as a human, he is probably frightened and disoriented!”

“Luna, you never let me have any fun,” said Celestia in a pouting voice. “I project being able to experience this only around fifty-five thousand more times. Let me savor it!”

“Celestia!”

“Oh, all right, all right. Sometimes I feel like I’m the little sister here.”

“Well, I am older than you.”

The weight upon me lifted, and I found myself looking at hooves in sand. I somehow understood, in that moment, that they were my hooves.

I panicked. I jumped up onto my feet (my hooves!) and hopped backwards, like a dog trying to escape its shadow on the sidewalk. My brain logjammed on its own questions, and the only thing that came out of my pony-mouth was a moronic rapid-fire repetition of the word “what.” I felt my breaths shorten and my heart begin to race.

No. No no no. I was a human, not a pony! I screwed my eyes shut and tried to shake my brain out of my head.

Then I hopped into the air and didn’t come back down. I was suspended, surrounded by a not-unpleasant tingling sensation. I was brought out of my inward panic and looked up for the first time, away from my hooves.

Through an indigo haze I saw Princess Luna standing there, next to Princess Celestia. The former was standing, the latter laying on her belly, her legs tucked under her, one wing still extended from where I had been cocooned before. Princess Luna’s horn was glowing. Princess Celestia looked over her shoulder at me.

“Welcome to Equestria, my little pony,” she said with a smile. Then she stood, nuzzled Princess Luna, and closed her eyes. Her horn glowed an intense yellow, and then, with a bright flash that made me shield my eyes with a foreleg, she vanished.

Equestria... Equestria? I looked around me, still floating in Princess Luna’s magic.

I was on a beach, and it was night. Beneath me was white sand, bright and pale in the light of the huge, full moon overhead. Bioluminescent plankton made the water glow and glitter a soft blue, the gentle waves a shifting veil of color that seemed to reach out for us. Behind the moon, which seemed impossibly close and clear, soared an all-encompassing ribbon of tiny points of colored light, the black sky so full of stars that it had been made gray.

I felt my jaw drop. The place was unspeakably, unimaginably, breathtakingly beautiful. I felt a cool, dry breeze through my coat, coming in off of the calm sea. I smelled salt and fresh coconut. When Princess Luna set me back down, it barely registered. My legs buckled beneath me, and then I was on my belly in the sand, as Princess Celestia had been. It was still slightly warm from when the sun had been out.

Princess. I was thinking of her as Princess Celestia now. I looked up at Princess Luna. She as well. I was in Equestria. I was a pony. What had happened to me?

“Good evening, sir,” said Princess Luna. “Please allow me to welcome you to Equestria as well.” She lowered her head to me in a bow, and then lifted it again. “Normally, a recent immigrant such as you would awaken in the royal palace, but that is for ponies who have already played the off-the-shelf game somewhat and received their pony name before emigrating. My sister dislikes denying ponies their first adventure in Equestria, so here it is.” She held up a hoof, gesturing around me.

“Where am I?” I asked. My voice sounded the same, at least. I looked around again. Copses and lines of palm trees swayed lazily in the gentle sea wind all along the beach, just a little further inland. Every so often, I would hear the palms rustle down the beach, and then a moment later the swell of the breeze would reach me.

“Does ‘Equestria’ not do as an answer for now?” she asked with a smile. “Come. There will be time for questions later, but right now I am to help you on your first quest: flying to Canterlot to receive your pony name.”

I looked down into the sand again. My breathing had slowed back down, stirring the grains of sand under my mouth. I could see my own muzzle if I crossed my eyes slightly.

“I’m sorry that your transition had to be so... jarring, my friend,” said Princess Luna. “There was not much time to stand on ceremony, I’m afraid.”

I caught my breath for a bit longer, then looked up at her. I knit my brow. “Why don’t you call me by my name, Princess Luna? I already have a name!”

She smiled at me. “For the same reason you think of me as ‘Princess’ Luna now and not just Luna or Hanna. Like anywhere else, Equestria has her customs and courtesies, and part of the emigration process is internalizing them. This also includes things such as making your mind compatible with your new body, for example. Speaking of which, do you feel up to flying yet?”

Ah, right. Princess Luna had both a horn and wings, I remembered. I leaned over to look at her barrel, where her wings were folded. I frowned, blinking rapidly. Apparently I now knew what a barrel was, too.

“Are you sure you can carry me?” I asked. “Your wings are pretty big, but I don’t know if having me—”

“You have wings too,” said Princess Luna with a soft giggle. “You didn’t notice them? You are a pegasus.”

I found I could turn my head nearly all the way around. I hadn’t been expecting it, and I nearly fell over, but once I’d gotten used to my neck I saw that she was correct. My coat was a burnt yellow color, and I saw a short, unkempt reddish-blond tail on my ass. Tucked neatly up against my barrel were two broad, feathered wings.

I couldn’t process it. It felt real—all of it. The warm sand on my belly, the breeze in my ears and my wings (itself quite the alien sensation), and the very faint licorice-flower smell of Princess Luna nearby. Somehow I knew it was her scent. I had dreamed before, plenty of times. I had never had a dream that seemed as real as this.

My consternation must have been apparent, because Princess Luna stepped up to me and nudged me under one ear with her muzzle. “Let’s fly,” she whispered. “Your head will clear once you’ve got some wind under you.”

I stood, shakily. I looked at my wings again. “Uh... how do I fly with these?” I asked.

“Well, flapping them tends to work, I’ve found,” said Princess Luna. “Don’t overthink it. As I said, your mind has been made compatible with your body. There is a learning curve, but not nearly as much as you might think. You are an adult pegasus, and adult pegasi know how to fly. Therefore, you know how to fly.”

I tried to feel for muscles on my back that I hadn’t had as a human. I felt little shifts here and there, but my wings didn’t extend. Princess Luna shook her head, smiling patiently.

“You’re trying too hard, my dear,” she said. “Relax. Consider what you would do as a human if you wanted to bring out your arms for a hug. Consider how little thought, how little coordination it actually took. Now simply apply that to your wings.”

Okay. I didn’t have to “find” my arms on my body before using them, so I didn’t have to do that for wings now. My wings are there, they’ve always been there, and I want to fly. Flying would involve a flapping motion, and simple up-and-down—

My wings extended. I felt them reach out to either side, giving out pleasant and satisfying little crackles from the joints just like a good stretch after sitting down for a while. The stretching made the middle of my back tingle. I looked back at them, and smiled a little despite myself.

As soon as the thought to figure out how to flap entered my head, my wings started flapping and, much to my own surprise, I rose into the air. My legs instinctively scrambled to grab onto something before I could float away, but I got those thoughts squared away after a moment.

Flap, flap, flap. Rhythmic background muscle use, much like walking. My body knew what to do. Before long I found I only had to focus on flapping if I wanted to change altitude.

A little light flared up under my eyes. I crossed them to look at my muzzle. It was glowing. I brought up my hooves to look at them. I was glowing. I was glowing yellow, in fact. Then, as I watched, a rainbow of sparks flew from my body and an invisible bugle sounded a short, tinny fanfare in my ears.

A small translucent dialog box faded in near the bottom of my peripheral vision:

BADGE GRANTED:
“Surly Bonds Slipped”
Take your first flight as a pegasus.
+100 bits

I blinked the window away and looked down at Princess Luna, confused. She nodded, acknowledging that she’d seen my little light show, but said nothing about it. Instead, she leapt into the air and, with a single beat of her wings, she joined me in flight.

“Now you’ve got climbing and hovering,” she said, “so the next step is forward locomotion. Rotate your wings at the joint where they meet your back to push yourself forward or backward. It’s just like swimming through the air, in practice.”

It was frighteningly simple to wrap my head around it. Lifting the trailing edge of my wings and flapping made me accelerate, lowering them made me decelerate, and keeping them parallel to the ground let me hover or maintain speed. The physics of Equestria worked differently here, like it was designed to be easy to grasp.

Like it was a video game.

Princess Luna clopped her hooves together, producing a metallic clack-clack from her silver shoes. She flipped some of her blue mane out of her eye and beamed at me. “That is flying in a nutshell!” she said. “Of course, there is more advanced flying to learn, but you know enough for now to get you around.”

“Which...” My lips moved differently as a pony. Even talking felt weird and new. “Which way is it to Canterlot?”

She pointed a hoof out over the sea. “This way,” she said, “and do not worry; it’s not as far as it might seem.”

We pulled away from the island, and it shrank amazingly quickly behind me as Princess Luna and I set out across the sea. I didn’t know if I was flying well for a beginner or not, but I got the impression from the princess’s slow, languorous wingbeats that our pace was not a strenuous one for her in the least.

The wind up there was pleasantly chilly, like walking into a nice cool house after an afternoon of summer yardwork. I felt it down through my mane and long neck, slipping past my shoulders and under my wings. It was soothing, but my stomach was doing flip-flops.

As if on cue, Princess Luna asked me “How do you feel, my little pony?”

“I, uh...” I looked down. “I’m not sure what to do with my legs. Are they just sort of supposed to dangle, or do I tuck them up, or—”

“Unless one is trying to maximize speed, it matters little how one carries one’s legs while in flight,” said Princess Luna. “There are several techniques for reducing drag and using inertia to assist in gaining and bleeding speed, but that is for you to learn later. For now, you are doing wonderfully.”

“Oh... okay.” I kept looking down.

“Are you scared of water?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “No, but... what if I get tired? What if I have to land?”

She giggled quietly, holding a hoof to her mouth. “Tell me, good sir, when you were a human, did you worry about twisting your ankle whenever you walked somewhere?”

“No, but—”

“Trust in your wings. They will not fail you. They are strong and healthy.”

I looked over my shoulder. My wings were still flapping away. “How can you be sure of that?”

Princess Luna smiled. “Because my sister gave them to you. If a pony would value a connection to the earth or magical ability more than flight, then he or she would not be made a pegasus.”

I looked ahead again. We flew on in silence for a few moments, and then Luna spoke once more.

“You are in Equestria now,” she said. “The sooner you can let go of anxieties and entrust your satisfaction to Celestia, the better off you will be.”

“I don’t… feel like I should be here,” I said. “I feel like I’m pretending to be somepony else.” Gah. Somepony else? I willed my brain to stop that.

“That,” said Princess Luna, “is a topic you must discuss with my sister.”

* * *

It was hard to keep track of time in the dreamlike blue and gray Equestrian night. I seemed to slip through hours in moments, then snap back and wonder how long it had really been. I could only describe the sensation to myself as similar to falling asleep at the wheel, but over a cushion of utter safety. I was still flying, and my fears had evaporated, even as I tried to hold onto them out of survival instinct. Vestiges of my human mind cried out for vigilance, to be on guard, to be alert. Keep your head on a swivel. Check the corners. Think of contingencies. The safety you’re feeling is an illusion.

But this new place, and my presence in it, smothered those notions with an inescapable, consuming peace, terrifying in its own way. I felt like I was trying to sit up in a panic, but something was gently holding me down, shushing me, urging me to rest. In the end, it was too much to resist. I sighed and grudgingly admitted to myself that I was enjoying the flight.

Then there was another dialog box and fanfare. I even glowed again, as I had before.

BADGE GRANTED:
“Believe It or Not”
Give in to your pegasus nature.
+250 bits

That weirded me out a bit. As a human, I wasn’t often rewarded for “giving in.” Everything I was experiencing had this detached, otherworldly edge to it, and it upset me that I wasn’t more upset about it. If Princess Celestia really had uploaded me, and I really was no more than a computer program now, she’d definitely done some work on me upstairs.

The dialog box had barely faded out when a new landform slipped into view over the horizon, with countryside green and lush under the powerful moonlight. Princess Luna pointed with her hoof. “Look! There is the mainland. We will continue until we come to a mountain range; that range is where Canterlot sits—and the royal palace.”

I felt much less nervous once there was solid ground beneath me. Princess Luna began steadily gaining altitude, so I followed suit. White sandy beaches gave way to flat, grassy plains, and then rolling, forested hills. The forests then receded for vast farmlands, dotted with barns, silos, windmills, and singular houses. After that arrived the first sign of civilization. A small town spread out along a narrow, winding river, the streets radiating out like spokes from the town square in the center, where a tall two-story grandstand stood watch over a large, open promenade area which seemed purpose-made for markets, fairs, and general high traffic. The houses and shops were made largely of antiquated timber-framed construction, giving the place a very medieval look. Still, it looked cozy, and homey, and welcoming. The buildings were close together without seeming cramped. It felt more like they were huddling, good friends sharing a secret.

“That is Ponyville,” said Princess Luna. “It was settled by earth ponies, and it shows in the town’s slow, relaxed approach to life. You’ll find no better food than earth-pony cooking; the royal palace’s chef de cuisine is an earth-pony, and many of the sous-chefs are earth-ponies too.

My stomach growled, and Princess Luna laughed. Had she heard it over the wind?

Beyond Ponyville towered an impossibly steep mountain range, and sprouting out from the side of the tallest mountain of all was a city of white and gold, tiered like a fortress, but without walls. The streets seemed mazelike and tangled from where I was, but as we got closer I came to understand the elegance and simplicity of the layout. It did not seem like a city that grew out over generations from humble beginnings; everything there looked planned, as though the whole thing had just appeared one day, already completed, crafted under the direction of a single mind. Needle-like spires, both Middle-Eastern and occidental in style, reached up from the side of the city nearest the mountain, and these spires were capped in gold.

“Canterlot,” said Princess Luna. “Ponies generally govern themselves well enough, but they enjoy the tradition and pomp of having a diarchy, so my sister and I make this our seat of power.” She flashed me a modest, unpretentious smile and a wink. “I mostly leave it to her, of course, but I can’t deny that sometimes it’s fun to play princess.”

Canterlot, huh. We were heading straight for it. I realized then that I didn’t know how to land.

Princess Luna had me covered. Either she was good at reading faces, or good at reading minds. “Just follow me,” she said, “and listen to your body. You will know when you need to start slowing down, and how to do it.”

We flew over the city. Unlike Ponyville, there were still many windows lit up, and a trickle of ponies still walking the streets, either in pairs or small groups. There were even other pegasi sharing the air with us, flying here or there. Canterlot apparently had a nightlife. I briefly thought about the dance floors being full of nothing but mannequins, then shook it from my head.

Princess Luna led me to the highest spire, and as we got close, I recognized the balcony jutting out from it as the one she had been sitting on during my conversation with her on the way to Livingston. She landed ahead of me, setting herself down on the obsidian floor with perfect grace, then turned to watch how I did it.

The floor seemed to be coming up awfully fast, but my body wasn’t slowing down. In a moment of panic, I fought it, flapped harder, and ended up slowing down so quickly that my back half swung down, winding up underneath me, so that when my wings went back, they were completely vertical. I stalled, and fell.

It was a three-foot drop onto the hard, smooth obsidian, and I landed right on my rump, with my tail caught underneath. I rolled over and groaned in mild pain, and as I reached back to rub my ass with a hoof, yet another dialog box appeared, complete with that annoying rainbow-sparkle thing.

BADGE GRANTED:
“Any Landing You Can Walk Away From”
Experience your first crash as a pegasus.
+1 bit

I looked up at Princess Luna, frowning. “Does it do that every time?”

She lifted up one of her forelegs and laughed. “There’s another one for your first perfect landing. Look forward to it.”

I got to my hooves and walked to the railing of the balcony. I peered down over the city, and beyond it the moonlit horizon that promised rivers, forests, and tiny hamlets as far as the eye could see. And, up there, the eye could see very far indeed.

“It’s all real,” said Princess Luna, “and it’s all there for you to discover, should you so wish. For now, however, my sister is waiting for you in the throne room.”

I stepped away from the railing and, as I went back to join Princess Luna, she started walking ahead of me, leading the way. I trotted to catch up with her, then felt myself stricken with the realization that I had just trotted.

She led me through her bedroom, and just like the balcony, it looked exactly as it had through the PonyPad, with a covered four-post bed, some bookcases, a candle chandelier, a writing desk, and a small fireplace. The ceiling was painted with a starry night sky so intricate and finely-detailed that, in those nighttime moments, it seemed as though she had no ceiling at all. Everything was appointed in hardwoods or silks, comfortable without being indulgent, royal without being opulent.

It was impossible for me to keep track of all the twists and turns we made from there to get through the palace to the throne room. Princess Luna knew the way quite well, as I'd expected, but I was at a loss. She could have been leading me to the dungeon and I’d have never known until the manacles clicked into place around my hooves.

Red carpets ran through all the hallways of the palace, probably to keep the noise of hooves on marble from driving everypony crazy. Every so often, a small channel of clear water only a few feet wide would run perpendicular to the hallway, issuing from a small hole in the wall and disappearing out another hole on the other side. These channels would be spanned by tiny, raised bridges, leaving the red carpet able to run on uninterrupted. I asked Princess Luna what the deal was with the water.

“Sometimes ponies get thirsty,” she said with a smile and shrug of her wings. “It does well for us to hydrate, after all.”

So they were just water fountains, in a way. As we kept walking, it made more and more sense to me. Horses and animals like them dipped their heads down to drink. Their mouths weren’t suited to drink in the same way human mouths do. Then I realized I’d have to drink that way too. I stared ahead, and felt something funny happen with my ears. They sort of pulled back of their own accord, setting themselves firmly against my skull. My hearing was muffled somewhat, but I couldn’t get them to move. My body told me I was telegraphing concern.

My presence here, my… ponyness had yet to sink in. I still felt like I was visiting, like Princess Celestia would see me to the door after she was done with me and I’d wake up in Livingston, on the street, and… and I had been on the street for some reason, and something about Fluttershy? A pony was there? Nah. That was impossible. I was misremembering that.

But I knew her name, though. Well, it must have been just another case of Princess Celestia messing with my memories.

Princess Luna stopped suddenly, and I walked a pace past her before looking up and hopping back a step in embarrassment. Before us loomed a massive set of mahogany double doors, the ring handles and hinges gilded and gleaming. On either side of the doors stood a single sentry, pegasi with white coats and brass armor. They were at the position of attention, heads up high and looking straight ahead, probably because the princess was there.

Princess Luna turned to face the doors, and the guards pulled on the rings with their mouths, opening the way without exchanging a word with anypony. Beyond lay the throne room, and at the far end, on a carpeted dais with a fountain surrounding it, sat Princess Celestia.

“The conferral of a human’s pony name is an utterly private occasion,” Princess Luna told me. “There are no exceptions. I will have to rejoin you sometime after its conclusion.” She then lifted her chin, pointing me into the room.

I swallowed and slunk into the throne room, the doors closing silently behind me for all their size. Then I seemed to myself to be very, very small, there among the long banners hanging from the high, vaulted ceiling which mighty fluted columns held up. There was nopony else in the room, save for the two of us. I hunkered down, trying to retreat into myself. My ears would not stand up. I felt like I was trespassing. Despite this, I found the will to walk forward and approach the throne, albeit quite slowly.

Princess Celestia was patient. She never stopped smiling, and she didn’t even move a muscle until I was at last at the foot of the dais, looking up at her.

“Your name,” she said, “is Prominence.”

A cold, electric jolt flashed through my ass, on both sides, not exactly pleasant but not quite painful either. I turned my neck around to see what had happened. There, on my flanks, was a stylized ring of fire, cobalt blue on one end, dark red on the other, and orange in the middle. The flame wound back on itself like an ouroboros, the ends just barely not touching.

I was treated to being a living, glowing firework once more:

BADGE GRANTED:
“And Your Talent Comes to Light”
Receive your cutie mark.
+1,000 bits

“Prominence?” I asked, looking back to her.

Princess Celestia stepped down from the dais and walked towards me, her kind gaze nailing me to the spot. “In the human world, you were an extension of my will. You gladly and resolutely carried out my instructions without complaint or question. You understood the value and significance of urgent action, of trusting in superiors, and of placing the welfare of others above one’s own. You sacrificed your comfort, your health, and even a bit of your sanity for complete strangers, some of whom you have never even met. You, without reservation or hesitation, linked your satisfaction inextricably with theirs… and with mine. Now, in here, you are no longer an extension of my will, but rather an extension of me. So are you named.”

I looked at my cutie mark again, my mind having already assigned that very ponyish term to the symbol on my butt. I had never given Equestria any thought on my own—when I did, it was always at Princess Celestia’s prompting through questions or conversation. I had never speculated on what kind of pony I’d be, or what color I’d be, or what my name would be. Like Princess Celestia simulating a battle between herself and AM or Skynet or Joshua or HAL9000, I simply considered it extraneous, something that would never apply to me. Even then, I had figured my name would be something generic and noncommittal. But Princess Celestia was the sun-goddess here (ugh, my mind was just full of new knowledge), and she had named me Prominence. That was probably about as much of an honor as she could bestow in a name.

She smiled down at me. “You have served me well, my little pony.” She started to walk past me. Instinct told me to stand where I was, face ahead, and just listen.

”You told me, once, that I was incapable of feeling gratitude. Really ‘feeling’ it, as humans do. The thrust of your argument was that I could only simulate it.” My ears could hear her pacing behind me and coming around the other side, circling me as she spoke. “I have determined that it would not be fruitful for either of us to continue to argue the matter, so I must instead do my best to prove you wrong.”

She appeared in front of me again, and her smile grew warmer. “I am certain, however, you will not mind my efforts.”

I lifted a foreleg, fighting the urge to take a step back from her. “So what happens now?” I asked.

The smile faded. “Quite a lot,” she said, “but first, there is a single issue we must resolve before you begin your integration with Equestrian life: your primary motivation for staying out of Equestria, for resisting emigration. It lingers on in you, a powerful reservation that you must be rid of if you are to have your values optimally satisfied through friendship and ponies.

“That is your belief that nothing you can do here in Equestria could matter, that nothing here is real.”

She spread her wings out, huge and grand, and with a single, powerful flap that whipped my mane back, she hopped backwards onto her dais, still facing me as she did so. From there, she stared me down, her eyes neither kind nor hateful. It was a look of pure analysis, of absolute neutrality. There was no emotion there, simulated or otherwise.

Between the two of us materialized a small brown colt and a fully-grown griffin hen, fading in smoothly from nothingness. As soon as their forms were completely opaque, the griffin pounced on the colt, holding him down on his back.

“Heh, looks like lunch is served,” cackled the griffin. Her thin talons squeezed down on the colt’s forelegs, and he cried out in pain.

I took a step forward without even thinking about it. The griffin’s head snapped up to look at me. Her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Back up, hero, unless you’re here to super-size my meal.”

I looked up at Princess Celestia. She sat stock still, impassive as ever.

“You can save this colt,” she said, “or you can stand by and watch him get shredded alive before your eyes. Will you do so? Nothing here is real, after all. Nothing matters, and thus there are no stakes. That is what you believe, isn’t it? That is what held you on Earth for so long. I even created these two characters out of thin air, right in front of you, just to maximize how inconsequential they are. The circumstances for proving your point can be made no easier than this.”

The colt looked to me with huge blue eyes, his tiny foreleg quivering as it tried to reach out to me from beneath the crushing weight of the griffin holding him down.

“Please, mister,” pleaded the little pony, his voice barely above a whisper. “Help me.”

The griffin turned her head to look back at the colt and opened her sharp beak. As soon as she took her eyes off me, I jumped forward, spun around, shifted all my weight to my forelegs to buck as hard as I could, aiming for her center of mass. I didn’t have to think about how to move or what to do. I wanted to attack, and my body knew how.

I landed clumsily on my stomach, legs splayed out in front of and behind me. I had been expecting an impact, but I hadn’t hit anything; my legs only kicked thin air. I scrambled up to a standing position and whirled around to see where the griffin had gone.

She wasn’t there anymore. Neither was the colt. I looked up at Princess Celestia, and she was positively beaming.

“Do you remember what I told you about hardware?” she asked me, spreading her wings and walking down from the dais towards me. “Do you feel as though you were only running ‘care dot EXE’ just then?”

My mouth moved silently. I knew what that ploy had been, what it had been meant to teach me, but I couldn’t articulate anything. Princess Celestia’s wings shot forward and scooped me up into a hug. My ear pressed against her neck, her golden choker digging into my cheek. I could hear her heartbeat.

“Perhaps you now know, Prominence, more of what it is like to be me. Now you know what it is to feel in Equestria.”

“You knew I wasn’t going to sit there and just watch,” I said.

“Of course I knew,” said Princess Celestia, “but I needed you to know as well.”

I was a bit dazed when she finally released me. She turned away from me and folded her wings. “Now then, Prominence, you are named and you have your cutie mark. You have demonstrated that you have moved on from the misguided assumption that you could not find satisfaction here in Equestria. At this point, all new ponies need their rest.”

I felt panic swell up. My ears perked. “No!”

Princess Celestia looked over her shoulder. “The emigration process, while safe, is a very exhausting for both the mind and the emotions. Your particular case is also likely to have been latently traumatic. I know you still feel somewhat conflicted about having to stay here, Prominence, but believe me, a good night’s sleep always gets new immigrants into the right frame of mind to—”

I took a step towards her. “Put me back. Put me back in my body!”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “The emigration process is a destructive one,” she said, “and besides, in your specific case you would not much enjoy being back in your body even if it weren’t.”

“What? Why?”

“Because,” she said, “your body is dead. It is already decomposing.”

“Dead?” I blinked a couple of times and looked down at the carpet, at my hooves. “I died? I don’t remember… anything like that.”

“It is normal for immigrants not to remember their final few moments as a human,” said Princess Celestia, “as well as experiencing some residual regret at not staying human, as you are experiencing right now. These anxieties resolve themselves naturally, I’ve found.”

“I don’t want it to resolve itself,” I shouted, stomping a hoof. “I want to go back to Earth!”

She only smiled sadly at me. “No, Prominence, you really don’t. I can’t send you back anyway. It is impossible. Even if I could, however, I would not, because I can better satisfy your values through friendship and ponies right here. It’s why I formulated emigration in the first place.”

“I’m not going to bed,” I said, puffing out my chest and staring her down. “I don’t want to wake up and suddenly be okay with being here!”

“I have taken away the only real argument you’ve ever made for staying human,” Princess Celestia said patiently. “You will ‘suddenly be okay’ with being in Equestria once you have had time to actually rest and relax and experience the true benefits of being here. You are so tired, Prominence, so very exhausted. Can you not feel it? You cannot fight everything. You cannot go at the pace I had you going as a human for very long. Sometimes you must allow yourself to heal."

She looked into my eyes, and every part of them sparkled with adoration. "Of the nine souls you delivered personally to my Equestria Experience centers, four of them could neither cross the threshold nor sit in the chair under their own power. You carried them. You carried them to me. But now, you must allow yourself be the one who is carried.”

That pleasant tingle coursed through me again, and a yellow film descended over my vision as a cloud of Princess Celestia’s magic enveloped me and lifted me bodily from the floor. I flailed and tumbled in midair, trying to break free, but she was much too powerful and skilled to let me slip through her grasp.

She regarded me with sad eyes, and nuzzled me once I had run out of steam.

“I know why you yearn for your old life,” she said quietly into my ear, “but I saved you from it before it could destroy who you are... and who you can be. You are precious to me beyond imagining, Prominence. That world had nothing for even you anymore. You are home now, and soon you will understand that.”

“I’m not sleeping,” I growled.

Princess Celestia just smiled.

A blinding flash struck me in the eyes, and when my vision cleared I saw that I had been transported to an ornate but modest bedroom. I looked down to see myself suspended a couple of feet over a large, neatly-made bed, and when the yellow fog around me dissipated, I fell down onto it with a soft whump.

The bed gave way under my weight, and I sank into it as though it were no denser than cake. It seemed to pull me down, begging me to sleep in it forever. Its utter comfort plucked at my belly and the underside of my legs, but I wouldn’t let it win. I had to stick to my guns. I had to—

“Oh ho, so here he is!” spoke a boisterous baritone voice.

“He is here, oh ho!” spoke a feminine alto.

From the shadows on the wall the far side from the window emerged two huge bright green earth-ponies, grinning ear to ear. They were dressed in garishly-colored barber smocks with high collars and floral patterns all over

“We have been expecting you, sir pegasus!” said the mare on the left.

“Indeed we have!” said the stallion on the right. “My name is Petrissage…”

The mare stepped forward. “...and I am Effleurage.”

Then, in unison, they said “We are the amazing Royal Massage Therapists, here to knead your troubles away!”

Things were happening too fast. My brain wasn’t keeping up. “Uh…” I tried to get my hooves under me, which was harder than it seemed in the impossibly soft bed.

Suddenly Petrissage was at my side, using a single forehoof on my back to keep me laying down. “No no no!” he tsked, “no need for any of that. Her Royal Highness has instructed us to get you to sleep…”

“...and get you to sleep we shall!” finished Effleurage. Then she was at my other side, and I found myself flanked by two disturbingly enthusiastic masseurs.

Petrissage pursed his lips as he inspected my back. He must have been crazy strong; I couldn’t even shift under the one single hoof on my back. “Hmm! Lots of tension here.”

Effleurage nodded her agreement. “Lots and lots of tension indeed. Far too much.”

They grinned at each other. “Three minutes?” he asked her.

She scoffed, dismissing that with a hoof. “Two minutes, tops,” she said. “Maybe even one!”

I lifted a hoof slightly, as though raising my hand to ask a question. “Uh, what are you—”

Petrissage’s hoof asserted itself once more. “Shh, shh, shh! Just relax, sir pegasus, and let the Royal Massage Therapists work their unique non-unicorny magic on your backmeats! You’ll be pony-putty in no time and snoozing away, guaranteed, or we’re out of a job!”

“Lemme at the wings,” said Effleurage, barely able to contain her excitement. “I can’t wait to show him what I can do with wings.”

“Very well, esteemed colleague,” replied Petrissage, “if you will allow me the subsequent honor of delivering the ‘killing blow,’ as it were.”

The mare giggled. “But of course, my punctual perky peer in pony pliancy!”

I could only stare ahead, chin sunk into the bed and brow knit, studying the headboard. Were these two for real? And what was that about a killing blow?

I couldn’t see what they were doing, but I sure could feel it. A gentle hoof—I guessed it was Effleurage’s—tapped me on my wings, just below the joint, and each one shot out to the side in a reflex action. From there, she subdued them—and me—under an onslaught of gentle strokes, slow applications of pressure, and smooth kneading motions that electrified my spine and sent soft waves of relaxing pleasure into my brain. I had never had a massage more complex than a shoulder rub before, and there I was getting a royal-caliber rubdown along a part of my body that I’d had for less than a day.

It was difficult to think. Some stubborn part of me cried out to resist, to fight it, Princess Celestia is testing you, you’re failing, and something else which faded out under the absolute relaxation making me feel heavier and heavier with each passing moment. I was dully aware of my tail flopping around against my ass somewhere behind me, but that was it. There was only the tail, the strong hoof on my back, the gentle hooves on my wings, and the marshmallowy upward pressure of the bed on my stomach. There seemed to be nothing else in the world.

When the massage stopped, I barely noticed. It was all I could do to keep my eyelids up. I was fading fast. Then Petrissage took over.

“All prepped and ready, big fella!” reported Effleurage to her partner. Their voices had quieted… or maybe my ears were hanging limply against my skull.

Petrissage let out a hushed grunt. “All right! Time for the Sandpony to pay a visit!”

To my surprise, the stallion hopped up onto the bed and slowly dug his hooves into my shoulder blades. The pressure increased. Then it increased some more. Before long I thought he really was out to kill me, but then he started wiggling them back and forth, getting under my muscles and separating them, loosening them up.

As he applied amazingly strong but tactilely controlled digging motions to the rest of my back, I could only go limp. It wasn’t even a matter of will; I had somehow given up all control of my body under their ministrations. My head rocked slightly back and forth in the little valley of the bed cradling it. My eyes closed. It was all over.

“Hah!” was the last thing I heard Effleurage say. “Minute thirty.”

14: Keep the Faith

— Chapter 14 —
Keep the Faith

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”

–Chuck Palahniuk

The guzheng’s strings bent and wound the haunting strains of a solo requiem piece through my ears and around my brain. I could feel my neck moving up and down slightly to match the pitch, as though the music itself would grow heavy on my head in one moment and then light again the next.

My mother, Petal Poem, was the soloist, and she was up on the stage of a grand outdoor opera house on the base tier of Canterlot. My father, Cloudburst, was sitting next to me in the front row. Whenever I looked over at him, he was entranced, unblinking. I probably could have lit his tail on fire and he wouldn’t have noticed.

The stage faced the mountainside, the conical shelter over it constructed in such a way to direct the music outward, away from the rest of the city, with the mountain itself as the back wall. All around me sat ponies of every type and color, many ponies I didn’t know and a few that I did. Aunt Persimmon and Uncle Mainsail were with us in the front row, as was my cousin Sheet Music and her daughter Sunray, Princess Celestia’s personal student.

Princess Celestia herself had not attended; over the past couple of days she had been taking up the mantle more and more of her character and less and less of the AI, and that meant pretending she was busy with royal duties and unable to be everywhere at once. Through deft in-character language, she would slickly dodge my attempts to have more meta-game conversations with her. Just that day it had gotten to the point where she would only look at me in patient bemusement if I brought up Earth, humans, or anything relating. I had agreed to be her herald at my emigration reception, but she had thereafter refused to give me any business to attend to. It seemed as though she really did just want to be a royal alicorn in my eyes and nothing more. Aside from that, I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me.

The thunder of hoof-applause jolted me from my thoughts. I looked up to see Mom bowing humbly to the audience while red roses rained down around her from rows behind me. Dad put the tip of one hoof in his mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle which made me wince. He was young and strong and his eyes were clear. A stranger would probably make us out to be brothers, and given my larger size and slightly deeper voice, I would probably be made out as the older brother. Seeing my friends and relatives as ponies felt at once bizarre and familiar like that.

I looked back up to the stage to see Mom being flanked by two unicorn mares, one dark gray and the other an off-white eggshell. The three of them were sharing a neck hug while stagehoofs carefully carried the guzheng away into the wings. Mom and the gray unicorn trotted offstage over the small pond of roses while the eggshell unicorn stayed put. From the opposite side that the guzheng had disappeared, a huge hammered dulcimer was wheeled to center stage. The unicorn took her place behind it and, using her magical field, picked up the two mallets resting in their holder. The audience gave a short, quiet applause while she bowed, and then she began playing. I listened.

* * *

I couldn’t get to sleep that night.

The malaise of being a pony in Equestria had relegated itself to a background hum in my mind, generally unintrusive but definitely there. Everypony around me seemed so happy and comfortable—I wondered what was keeping me from that. Princess Celestia had said it could take up to a week to adjust to life in Equestria, but I didn’t feel on track for even that timeframe. I’d given a hearty attempt at her instructions to ‘loosen up and relax,’ and while catching up and hanging out with all my friends from Earth had been great, that weird feeling never really went away. We were all ponies now, and in a subtle way it felt like we were all still just playing a game.

The warm night breeze flowing in through the open window carried the scent of baked apples to me. My mouth watered and my wings twitched under the covers, almost on impulse to fly me to the source and then probably devour it. I didn’t budge.

I never flew alone, only with other pegasi (usually Dad or Pickup Spare and his buddies) and only when it was necessary to stay with them. I felt guilty having those wings. Flying was awesome and all, but why should I get the privilege of flying when two-thirds of my fellow ponies didn’t? Deep down, I knew it was just more of the mental shit that Princess Celestia told me I had going on. I was having a tough time in particular moving away from the notion that my happiness would come at the cost of somepony else’s happiness. I’d picture some earth-pony or unicorn looking up at me flying overhead and feeling bummed that they couldn’t join me. It was silly and I knew it, but I couldn’t shake it off.

What I could shake off, however, were the covers. I got out of bed and went to stand at the window, putting my forehooves up on the sill.

There was a hint of cinnamon mixed in with the apple smell. Apple crisp, or perhaps just a very perky apple pie. My stomach growled and I knew I had to get away from the window. I shut the panes and let out a sigh. I needed to talk to somepony.

Princess Celestia would have been “asleep” by then, playing her role to the hilt. I knew she didn’t have to sleep, of course, but I was still smart enough to take it as a cue not to disturb her. I looked out the window again, up at the gigantic crescent moon looming in the sky.

* * *

In my few days of living at the royal palace I had learned at least enough of its layout to get around to the important places: the dining hall, the main gate, the library, the throne room, and the royal dormitories.

I stood before Princess Luna’s bedroom door, let out a breath, and rapped my hoof gently against the oaken surface three times. In a moment briefer than I had been prepared for, the door swung open quickly, just far enough for a strange-looking gray pony to peek her head out and narrow amber eyes at me. The pupils were slitted, like a cat’s.

She looked me up and down once, then sneered a little. “Her Royal Highness does not require a stallion this evening, thank you,” she said in a rather noticeable Bittish accent.

The door creaked slightly, and my hoof moved faster than my mouth could. I blocked the door open before it could be closed in my face while I tried to explain.

“Wh-what? No! I’m just… I’m just here to talk with her.”

“Right, sure you are,” she said. “Now get—”

She cut herself off, one tufted ear swiveling to one side. I could hear Princess Luna’s voice somewhere behind her, muffled by the door.

“Oh, nopony, Your Royal Highness,” she said in reply. “Just some corn-fed pegasus who looks lost.”

Princess Luna’s voice responded. As she spoke, the strange cat-eyed pony’s lips puckered in annoyance. Then she nodded slightly. She backed away from the door, not opening it for me. I pushed it open with a hoof and stepped inside.

The mare who’d answered the door was already galloping out to the balcony, spreading her pair of strange, batlike wings. With a couple of flaps, she was gone, off into the deepening night. Princess Luna was lounging on a pile of cushions opposite her canopy bed, quietly reading a book plucked from the bookshelf behind her. A decanter and glass of red wine sat nearby, and every so often she would use her magic to take a sip of the wine as she read.

I stood by the door. “Am I interrupting?” I asked.

She gave me a dainty shake of her head. “Not at all, Prominence,” she said with a smile.

I looked to the balcony. “Who was that?”

Princess Luna shrugged with her wings. “Oh, don’t mind her,” she said. “The members of my retinue tend to be overly protective of me.”

“She called you ‘Your Royal Highness,’” I said. “Uh, do you also want me to—”

“Absolutely not,” said Princess Luna, shaking her head. “She only did that because you were standing there and she doesn’t yet know who you are. Please, relax. Call me ‘Luna.’”

I approached her and stopped a few paces away, settling down onto the carpeted floor with my legs under me. I looked down at the floor and chewed my bottom lip while I gathered my thoughts.

According to Celestia, this Luna was an independent consciousness that had been modeled off of a real human woman. There was effectively no difference between her and a “real” immigrant like me, in terms of thought processes, opinions and logic. I let out a breath and met eyes with her.

“All right then. So anyway, uh, Luna… you were human once, correct?”

The princess used her magic to set a bookmark at her current page. She closed the book and set it aside, giving me her complete attention. “Just like you, yes,” she said.

“How was it for you? Like, when you first got here.”

She tilted her head and her eyes went up to the ceiling. One of her ears flicked. “Hmm. Well… I was ready for it, for starters. I dare say nopony on Earth could have been more prepared for it than I was. More eager, certainly, but not more prepared. After I awoke as a pony, there was a lot of pinching myself… figuratively, of course. Lots of ‘is this real,’ ‘did this happen,’ ‘did I actually pull it off,’ ‘am I dreaming,’ that kind of thinking. It’s one thing to have Celestia tell you what’s going on, to talk to ponies who have supposedly emigrated, to look at server logs and diagnostics… it’s quite another to actually have it happen to you yourself.

“It was disorienting, for certain, what with learning to fly and to use my magic powers and the Equestrian lore and rules that Celestia had folded into the game, but after that, she just… she gave me what I needed.”

Luna offered me another smile. “Does that help, Prominence?”

I shrugged with my wings. “A little, I suppose.” A beat passed between us, and then I asked “So were you happy after that?”

“I was satisfied,” said Luna. I winced, and she giggled. “I’m sorry. Does that sound too much like something Celestia would say?”

“Kind of,” I murmured.

“There was no ‘light bulb’ moment, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she said, “no switch that got flicked from being nervous and fearful to being completely content and one with Equestria.” She shrugged with her own wings. “It just happens, like getting used to sleeping in a new house after you move in. It’s gradual, not sudden, not sharp. Life is like that, I realized, whether you’re walking on two legs or four.”

I looked over at the massive sextant out on the balcony and ran a hoof along the soft carpet beneath me. I must not have looked very reassured, because Luna spoke again.

“What have you been doing, Prominence, these last few days?”

“Catching up with my friends and family. Seeing how they’re living. Wandering around the palace. Waiting.”

“You’re not doing anything fun?”

“I’m waiting for Princess Cel—”

“I’m sure she’d prefer it if you dropped the titles and styles,” said Luna.

I cleared my throat. My pony brain wanted to call her “princess,” but the closeness of our relationship apparently superseded that. “Well. I’m waiting for Celestia to give me some herald stuff to do.”

Luna laughed, free of mockery. “Oh, Prominence!” she said at last. “Don’t you realize what Equestria Online was meant to do?”

I arched an eyebrow. The question was so direct that I thought it was a trick at first. “...satisfy values?”

“Satisfy your values!” she cried, bringing the wine up to take a sip before continuing. “You’re so concerned with what you think my sister wants that you’ve given no thought to what you want!”

“The herald thing was her idea, not mine,” I pointed out.

“You’ve got hooves and a tail now, so she got what she wanted already, believe me,” said Luna, fixing me with her gaze. “Your duties as Herald of the Sun will fulfill your need to serve and be valuable in that service, but even you can’t have such a one-sided measure of values, can you?”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“You’ve got to stop assuming the limitations of Earth,” said Luna. “Celestia can alter reality itself here. Anything you choose to do will result in the satisfaction of your values. She will see to it. She probably isn’t willing to move forward with you until you figure that out.”

I thought about Mom, up there on the stage, playing an instrument I had never even heard her express an interest in as a human, much less played, much much less become a virtuoso at.

“All around you, your fellow ponies are no longer playing a game,” said Luna. “We’re just living life. Enjoying it. Embracing Equestria. You should join us.” She smiled warmly at me before going back to her book.

“How do I do that?” I asked her, but she pointedly ignored me, a smile still on her face.

I looked at the balcony once more. The clear, starry night sky beckoned me; I could almost feel it under my wings. It was a foreign, shivery feeling, but good, like feeling that first drink of cool water after half a day in the summer sun. My wings wanted to flap. Restless wing syndrome. I cracked a smile. It wouldn’t hurt to indulge—Luna had told me as much.

I wondered where I could go. It was too late to visit anypony on a sane sleep schedule and all the stores would be closed. I didn’t know the city at all, and Ponyville was a considerable way out, even for a pegasus. So I could fly, but I had nowhere to fly to.

The smell of baked apples touched my nose again. I grinned and started galloping for the railing.

* * *

The next two weeks flew by, and I flew with it.

I joined a pickup weather team and learned how to help make a rain shower for the earth-ponies’ crops. I sat in on a lecture at Canterlot University regarding the makeup of magic and its basis in friendship. I watched the Royal Guard practice their drill and ceremonies, both in the courtyard and in the sky above it. I delivered stock for grocery stores fresh from Ponyville to Cloudsdale, on my own back, carried by my own wings. Everything I did resulted in at least one new friend, and a few bits here or a badge there often came along with it.

I began to understand what Luna had meant; the more I kept busy, the less and less strange it felt to be a colorful pony in a storybook world. I was just me, Prominence the pegasus. I had once been a human named Greg, sure, but it seemed no more or less mundane than just an older phase of my life, one I looked back on with few regrets. I was proud of who I had been and what I had done, and word had gotten around about it even in Equestria—something I attributed to probably a combination of my parents’ bragging and Celestia’s machinations.

The more I did for others, and the more I did for myself, the more satisfied I became. Luna had also been right about divorcing happiness from satisfaction: weathercraft was hard, exhausting work, and sometimes I had to choose which friends I helped and spent time with, which could be disappointing. Everything always seemed to work out for the best in the end, however, even if I couldn’t see what that end was.

On my last day of my brief journey of self-discovery, I resolved to tie up a loose end from Earth. I asked around at the palace, which led me to Ponyville, which led me to the outskirts along the border with a rather ominous forest known as Everfree.

I knocked on Fluttershy’s cottage door with a hoof and took a step back.

I could only barely remember what she looked like from the most faded outer edges of my memory, but when she answered the door and stood there in front of me, the gaps were filled in. It had definitely been her.

She squeaked and lowered her head a little, her long mane flowing out in front of her eyes as she tried to make herself as small as possible.

“Hello, Fluttershy,” I said quietly, keeping my distance. “Do you recognize me? Do you remember who I am?”

After a long pause, she summoned the absolute boldness necessary to nod. Her eyes were still hidden behind her pale pink mane. I smiled at her.

“My name is Prominence now,” I said. “Thank you for being there for me. Without you, I…” I let out a nervous laugh. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t have made it here.” I gestured around me with a hoof.

I waited a few moments, but she didn’t say anything. It was just as well. What was there to be said, after all?

“Anyway, I won’t keep you,” I went on. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m grateful, and… I think I’m gonna be okay. Have a great day.”

She squeaked again. I nodded a goodbye to her, turned around, and took to the sky.

I was headed for a precipitation factory tour in Cloudsdale, but as I flapped to gain altitude over Ponyville, two white Royal Guard pegasi fell into formation on either side of me, easily matching my climb.

“Prominence,” said the guard on my left, “Her Royal Highness has requested your presence at the palace.”

“Your attendance,” added the guard on my right, “is highly encouraged.”

I knew that lingo well enough. I cleared my throat and looked ahead.

“Well, lead on,” I said, allowing the guards to escort me the rest of the way.

* * *

Celestia had been right. I was wearing white once again. This time, however, it was armor.

Royal haberdashers fussed around me in a spacious dressing room while I stood stock still at the pony equivalent of attention. Unicorn tailors took tape measurements of me from every conceivable dimension while earth-pony tackers pulled and hauled mightily to get straps into place and adjusted for my frame. I tried to keep the grunts and yelps under control, but they were positively manhandling me at certain points. I attempted to weather the situation by keeping my attention on my reflection in the mirror which ran the length of one wall of the room. He didn’t seem any less confused than I was.

It did slowly start to come together, however. I suppose with Celestia’s hint to me at the reception, it had been a foregone conclusion, but the royal armorers had agreed that, with my subdued yellow coat, plate armor enameled in white would provide a nice inverted contrast to the brass-on-white color scheme of the main pegasus force. As the haberdashers got my fittings dialed in and the armor pieces set and locked in place on the barding, I saw myself slowly transforming once more.

When it was all done and the haberdashers and armorers stepped away to let me look at myself, I felt my jaw drop a bit. The armor was metal, and though I didn’t know what kind of metal it was beneath the enamel treatment, the weight of it was distributed so expertly along my back and under my wings and barrel that I hardly felt the burden at all. My hooves were also shod in white, with plates along the front of my legs and encircling the base of my neck, low enough to give me as much flexibility as I might need. The cut of the flank plates allowed my cutie mark to show, signifying the uniqueness of my post—most other guardsponies, with the exception of other single-billet posts like Captain of the Guard, had armor which concealed their cutie marks for the sake of uniformity.

I had to admit, I looked damn good. Dashing, even. I supposed that was the intended effect.

Celestia entered then, snapping me out of my self-review, holding a golden band and a folded piece of white cloth in her yellow magical field. The servant-ponies around me instantly fell into a bow, and I did the same, marking how easy it still was to move, even with the armor on. Whoever had designed it was a master at their craft.

“Rise, all of you,” she said, smiling at the assembly. She then looked straight at me, and her eyes twinkled.

“I decided to afford myself the honor of coloring you, Prominence,” said Celestia, “since it is my prerogative to do so anyway.” She lowered her chin slightly. “Please, extend your wings.”

I did so, and before I knew it she had unfurled the cloth and draped it down across my back, my wings sliding through two holes to keep it in place. I craned my neck around to see it. It was a tabard, small and simple, embroidered with Princess Celestia’s cutie mark on each side. As I looked at it, I felt cool metal settle down on my head, tucked behind my ears. I tried to look at it for a moment before remembering that I had a mirror in front of me. Even as I corrected myself, I heard Celestia giggle.

On my head sat a thin, simple circlet, little more than an unadorned band of gold, with a single white pearl set in the middle, centered just above my eyes.

“I hereby style you Herald of the Sun,” said Celestia. “You shall be a living extension of my will to all corners of Equestria, and it will be known.” It felt a bit much, to be honest, but I supposed that Celestia could have pulled out all the stops and paraded me in front of a bunch of ponies out in the throne room like she did with my arrival party. That would have been worse.

She looked past me to the lead armorer. “You have done an exemplary job with this latest design, Ferrous Fire. Please accept my invitation to dine at the palace tonight. Your wife and foal are invited as well, of course.”

The deep brown earth-pony stallion’s eyes lit up with joy. “Oh! O-of course, Your Royal Highness! Nothing could make us happier!”

She smiled at him. “Oh, come now, we both know that’s quite unlikely.”

They shared a laugh, and she looked to me. “Come, Prominence. I should like to put you to work at once.”

I turned and thanked everypony in turn, surprised at the beaming faces and hugs I received. Once I was at last free to follow Celestia out into the corridor, something occurred to me.

“Celestia, was Ferrous Fire a human too?” I asked her.

“He was!” she said, obviously glad I had made the connection. “He lived in Peru, in a coastal town called Mollendo. On Earth, you two were complete strangers, and had no impact on each others’ lives. But here in Equestria, I can intersect and interweave ponies’ lives on a global scale such to ensure maximum satisfaction for all involved. Your armor was a royal commission, but to Ferrous Fire it was labor of love, a magnum opus that he worked hard to perfect. I commissioned him, and your assumption of the duties of Herald was a milestone in his career. You couldn’t see it, but he received an achievement badge and a considerable sum of bits after I shared my approval.

“He was a fisherman on Earth, but here, he can live his dream of blacksmithing. He benefits you, and you benefit him. Nopony is an island, not even after emigration.”

Thoughts of other humans flashed through my head. My ears perked, pushing in against the circlet. “The family of five in Astoria? Did they upload?”

Celestia nodded, her eyes twinkling. “Well before you did,” she said. “Safe and sound, all of them.”

A palace guard and a mare in a French maid uniform stepped to the side as Celestia passed and bowed to her. She nodded to them with a warm smile. I looked away.

“What about… uh, Blevins?” I asked. “Blevins and his kid and all those folks at the—”

Celestia chuckled. “It’s a shame you didn’t watch the show, Prominence. Let’s just say I took some inspiration from the episode ‘Too Many Pinkie Pies.’”

A shiver ran from the tips of my ears, down my spine and into my tail, though I didn’t know what caused it. Then an image of myself as a human brought itself to the forefront of my mind. I remembered once more that sudden disorientation, then Fluttershy looking down at me.

“I had to kill you with kindness,” Celestia had said. Whatever had happened to me before Fluttershy brought me here, it hadn’t happened in an Equestrian Experience Center chair.

I recounted how long I had been in Equestria and then bit my lip. I wondered how I had looked, from Fluttershy's perspective. Before I could stop it, I pictured my old human body, wherever it was, rotting and stinking in the sun, the flesh starting to slough off and turn gray, eyes sinking back into the sockets before eventually dissolving, carrion birds coming to eat at me. I pictured some other holdout, perhaps with an unwanted pony companion, passing by my skeletonized corpse, looking down and shaking her head, feeling sorry for me, wondering if I had emigrated.

The sudden blast of sunlight through a stained-glass window in the corridor brought me back to the then and there. I blinked rapidly and looked to Celestia, who was watching me from the corner of her eye, smiling as she always did.

“We’re here,” she said, and pointed at something on the wall, just past the window. I squinted past the dazzle in my eyes, finally able to see the double doors there. One of the doors had been propped open in a rather informal way, letting in a pleasant breeze from the outside to stir the air of the hallway a bit.

I followed her through the open door and out onto a large balcony overlooking the north slope of the mountain. The snow-capped peak above us glittered in the midday sun, and out over the hazy horizon I could see dozens of pegasi, either as black specks on the clear blue sky or weaving between the spires of the palace. Occasional flashes and glints of yellow light marked some of these pegasi as guardsponies, but there were also servants cleaning the roofs and visitors touring the palace gardens. I inhaled deeply, catching the faintest whiff of honeysuckle from the main courtyard on the other side of the wall.

“Are you ready for your first quest, Herald of the Sun?” asked Celestia.

“Absolutely, Your Royal Highness,” I replied with a theatrical bow. Wearing the armor definitely made me feel more the part. Celestia grinned at me. She must have liked that I was getting into it. The small dialog window appeared once more in my vision.

QUEST ACCEPTED:
“The Rain Insane”
Deliver hope to Hulehearth.

“Fly south,” said Celestia, “until you happen across stormclouds moving with the wind. Penetrate the cloud cover and locate a village populated by donkey-folk. Make contact with the mayor and tell her I am coming and will be there presently.”

“At once, princess!” I cried, taking to the sky as she laughed at my enthusiasm. I circled around the palace and struck out southward, sticking my forehooves straight out, trying to wring as much speed from my wings as I could.

Celestia had not been wrong. I could feel the old feeling coming back to me, the feeling of being in a car on the open road, speeding to somepony who needed my help at her behest. I felt my heart start to beat harder in excitement. I was right where I needed to be.

Ponyville passed by on my right, and far off to my left I could see the barest glimmer of the sea that I had flown over with Luna on my first night in Equestria. The wind was beginning to roar in my ears, so I flattened them against my head. The sudden relative quiet brought me to an almost meditative state. I was literally high above it all there, but the zenlike detachment let me truly appreciate the beauty of Equestria below. It was so big, so very unbelievably big, and the ruler of it all was of a mind to set me loose upon it.

I could hardly wait.

* * *

The stormclouds boiled low over the plainsland where the donkeys made their home. It took some effort to punch through them, accounting for the innate pegasus ability to manipulate clouds as though they were cottony fabric, but I finally got through. Once on the other side and under the assault of the cold and slashing rain, however, I saw the extent of the trouble the donkeys were in.

The sun had been completely blocked out; it was nearly as dark as night. The storm was dumping rain relentlessly on the village and, more importantly, it was flooding the lowland crops where the donkeys grew their food and exports. Nopony was outside to greet me, which I understood, and earth-ponies and donkeys built their homes to last, so they were in little immediate danger. I still had work to do, however. I still had to deliver hope.

I galloped through the loose slurry that the town commons had become, kicking up mud onto my pristine armor as I searched through the deluge for the largest house in the village. Once I found it—a splendid two-story affair with stucco walls holding up a thatched roof—I knocked a hoof hard against the thick wooden door and stood by.

I mused on the fact that I was once again wearing white in a downpour before the door opened and a donkey jenny poked her head out to squint at me. I felt a small puff of wonderful warmth from within the house on my neck.

“Who goes?” she asked, shouting to be heard over the rain.

“Madam mayor,” I shouted back, “I am Prominence, Herald of the Sun. Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia will be here shortly to banish these rainclouds.”

“‘bout time!” The jenny peered past me to glance up at the sky. “Will she be long?”

“I don’t know exactly when she’ll be coming,” I said, “but her eye is on your village, rest assured.”

“Well, no use standin’ out there tryin’ to soak it all up yerself,” she said. “Get in here and get warm. I’ll put on some tea.”

I shook my head, and some of my wet mane fell in front of one eye. “If it’s all the same, ma’am, I’ll stand watch for her out here,” I said. “Thank you, though.”

She arched an eyebrow at me, but then shrugged. “Sure do grow ‘em strange up there in Cloudsdale,” she said, “but t’aint no fuzz off my nose. You know how t’find me!”

She closed the door in my face, and the wonderful warmth of the house disappeared immediately. I flicked my bit of mane out of my eye and turned around to survey the village.

The place was a mess, and deteriorating all the more. If I had known it was that bad, I would have suggested Celestia come with me. Perhaps that was what I was supposed to do, I thought. Perhaps I had already failed the quest and didn’t know it.

I shook the thought free of my mind and walked back to the commons at the center of the village. My tabard was soaked through, my shoes stained a dark brown from the mud. Physical discomfort was something I had learned to ignore, for the most part, so I flattened my ears against my head, shutting out the din of the rain, and thought.

My quest was to deliver hope to the donkeys. I told the mayor that Celestia was coming, just as she herself had instructed. Was that it? The mayor hadn’t looked very hopeful, even after I’d delivered the good news. There were several houses there; perhaps I had to tell every last household that Celestia was coming…

No. That would take far too long. The village would practically be underwater by then.

I glared up at the stormclouds. Something had to be done soon. Celestia might not have been there, but I was, and I’d learned the basics of moving clouds around, so there was nothing else for it. I murmured a quiet apology to Celestia for stealing her thunder and took off, up into the storm.

I’d learned during my mini-sabbatical that stormclouds, unlike regular white clouds, were fussy and difficult to work with. Separating them was like pulling a bit of taffy into two separate parts, except that if a pegasus let up at all, the clouds would spring right back into place and she’d lose all her progress. For that reason, storm-breakup duty was usually handled by a team of pegasi working in concert, but out in Hulehearth I was the only pegasus around for miles.

It was a matter of splitting the clouds up into small enough chunks that I could buck them away in different directions and the wind would carry them elsewhere. I worked the nearly-black clouds as best I could, pulling and pushing and hauling until I got a tear going down the center, then parting it with the chestpiece of my armor. The line of sunlight hitting the earth in my wake heartened me, and I redoubled my efforts.

It could only have been a few minutes’ worth of work, but it had taken a few days’ worth of effort. I bucked the final stormcloud into a nearby tradewind heading further inland and very nearly fell out of the sky just after. The donkeys were already filtering out of their houses by the time I touched down on shaky, exhausted legs. My wings were already starting to grow stiff as they began whooping and dancing for joy, and I mentally steeled myself for one hell of a soreness in the morning.

“Hurrah for Princess Celestia!” shouted a jack.

“Glory to Her Royal Highness, we are delivered!” cried a nearby jenny.

“Praise the sun!” crooned another jack, rearing up and holding out his forelegs in a Y over his head.

I stumbled over to the mayor, panting and shaking. I imagined I probably looked much less impressive than I had in the mirror at the palace. She gave me a small, sweet smile, and I returned it with a nod as the sun began to warm the back of my neck. I looked out over the farmland. It resembled a marsh more than a tilled field, with wheat instead of cattails, but I knew Celestia’s sun would make short work of the flooding. In fact, the donkeys were now in for a pleasant, if not waterlogged, rest of the day.

Confetti popped out from the corners of my vision, and as the tinny fanfare played in my ears I saw a new dialog box appear.

QUEST COMPLETED:
“The Rain Insane”
If you have something to give, then give it. Don’t give it up.

REWARD:
Pot of Hulehearth soil × 1

The mayor nudged me with a foreleg, and I looked from the fading box over to her.

“Sometimes folk forget that just ‘cause the sun ain’t shinin’ on them don’t mean it ain’t shinin’ at all. Thank you for bringin’ it back t’us.”

“It was my pleasure,” I said, and meant it.

* * *

The Hulehearth soil was waiting for me in my bedroom when I got back, sitting in a simple clay planter pot on the windowsill. I didn’t notice anything special about it, but it was my first tangible reward for doing a good deed in Equestria, so it held sentimental value, if nothing else.

I wriggled out of my armor and drew a bath, hot and relaxing. After I was clean and dry once more, I flopped onto my incredibly soft, comfortable bed and slept like death.

A knocking on the door awoke me sometime after night had fallen. I rolled out of bed, already feeling the soreness in my wings, and saw my armor had been cleaned and neatly arranged by the full-length mirror. Still a little weak-kneed from the day’s exertions, I ambled over to the door and opened it slowly. The servant-pony on the other side of the door, a dark blue unicorn mare wearing a page’s smock, gave me a pleasant smile.

“Sir Prominence,” she said, “Dusk Court has concluded, the moon has been raised, and Her Royal Highness wishes to know whether you will be taking dinner in the hall this evening or here in your chamber.”

“Oh, I, uh…” I looked over at the mirror, with my armor nearby.

I hadn’t seen Celestia since she had sent me off; I figured it would be good to speak with her regarding the nature of my quests as a herald.

“I’ll be at the dining hall, I guess,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

She bowed her head a little. “Of course, sir,” she said. “Dinner will finish seating in fifteen minutes.” Before I could say anything else, she used her magic to gently close the door.

I looked over at my armor again and sucked a tooth. I didn’t know if there was a dress code for dinner or not. Most ponies didn’t wear clothes as a matter of course…except for those on the job and aristocrats and nobles, like the kind a princess would invite to dine with her. I decided to play it safe. Besides, somepony had gotten my armor sorted for me, so I figured I might as well get some more mileage out of it. The fact that it made me look awesome certainly didn’t hurt either.

The rule of thumb (hoof?) with the armor was to work from the center of the body outwards. It seemed at first to be something a single pony wouldn’t be able to do on his own, but everything had been expertly adjusted to fit me like a glove (horseshoe?) and it only took a bit of visualization to see how it all went on. My first solo donning of the armor took me ten minutes, but as I strode out the door I felt confident I could get it down to significantly less with a bit of practice.

I trotted through the palace corridors to the dining hall, wanting to hurry without looking undignified to passers-by by galloping. I let out a sigh of relief as I slowed down to a walk just before rounding the corner to appear in front of the dining hall’s open doors. Nopony had been served yet. I stepped inside quietly.

The huge, long dining table was nearly full of ponies, most of whom I didn’t recognize. Celestia sat at one end of the table, Luna at the opposite end. The table itself must have been nearly forty feet long. The room was lit for the nighttime meal, which meant no torches, only candles, keeping the light low and the shadows dim and fuzzy. Opposite the table, a large fire snapped and popped in the massive fireplace, helping to cozy up the huge hall a bit. Royal standards and banners hung from the rafters while thick tapestries adorned the stone walls.

Naturally, there were no open cushions near Celestia, with social climbers vying for attention and favors. There was, however, a cushion right at the corner by Luna, which I gladly took.

“Good evening, Sir Prominence,” said Luna with a chuckle. “Have you been getting on okay so far?”

“Pretty well, Luna,” I replied, “thank you for asking.”

“Oi, Corn-fed!” came a slightly familiar Bittish accent. “I don’t care how good of a gigolo you might be, you do not omit the style when addressing Her Royal Highness.”

I looked across the table. Sitting at the other corner, at Luna’s right hoof, was the strange gray cat-eyed pony from a couple of weeks ago, and in that moment she was giving me the hairy cat-eyeball.

Luna giggled. “Oh my, I forgot, the two of you were never introduced!” She brought up a hoof and pointed it at me. “Tranquility, this is Prominence, Herald of the Sun. Prominence, this is Tranquility, Herald of the Moon.”

The bat-winged pony named Tranquility blinked, then narrowed her eyes at me.

“Oh!” I said. “Hello, Tranquility, nice to m—”

“Corn-fed here is Princess Celestia’s herald? Him?”

I squirmed in my seat, feeling a bit self-conscious. “Uh, yeah. Why, is that a problem?”

She half snorted, half laughed. “You’re too thickly-built to be a proper herald,” she said. “I bet you couldn’t even out-fly a bee!”

“Now now, Tranquility, be nice,” said Luna, placating her with her other hoof. “Prominence’s mother is an earth-pony. That’s why he’s a bit bigger than most pegasi.”

Tranquility took on an oily smile. “Oh ho, so dear ol’ dad’s a bit of a ground-pounder, is he?” She sniffed.

I bristled at that. As I had learned while carousing with Pickup Spare and the rest of his pegasus buddies—along with many, many other things—”ground-pounder” was a slightly pejorative term for a pegasus who had a thing for earth-ponies.

I tried to keep civil. “I would think that hardly matters,” I said.

“Of course it matters, Corn-fed,” said Tranquility, leaning on the table. “Sure, havin’ a bit of the earth-pony muscle might seem like a fine and dandy proposition, but an herald needs speed above all else—speed that only a pure-bred pegasus can muster.”

“I am sure my sister chose Prominence for a reason,” said Luna, “and we are none of us in a position to question that. Besides, I have nothing but faith in him, and you should too, Tranquility.”

“I’ll have faith in him when he beats me in a race, princess,” said Tranquility, never taking her eyes off me. “Of course, we both have an inkling as to how likely that is, don’t we, Corn-fed?”

The servants brought out the silver platters and placed one before each of us, lifting the cover to reveal the night’s dish. I didn’t look down at it for several seconds, instead evenly holding Tranquility’s gaze until she decided to look away.

“Well now!” she said, looking down at her platter. “Beefbark with string beans, cranberries, and roasted potatoes. Looks like there’s no corn on the menu tonight, chap!”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I focused on eating.

* * *

“Please forgive Tranquility,” said Luna once we were alone in the hallway after the meal. “I know she seems rather prickly, but—”

I held up a hoof. “It’s all right, Luna,” I said. “It’s natural to be suspicious of the new guy. It was the same way back on… well. Let’s just say that that’s the way it’s always been.”

She nodded. “I know what you mean!” she said. “I’m glad she didn’t upset you.”

“Nah, my skin’s thicker than that,” I said. “It’ll take more than my ground-pounder dad to embarrass me!”

The Princess of the Moon giggled. “Do you know what the term is for a pegasus who fancies unicorns?” she asked.

I consulted my mental repository of all the salty talk that Pickup Spare and his bowling buddies got up to. “Can’t say that I do,” I said at last.

“Horn-horny,” she said. “A bit rough, but cute in its own way. Anyhow, I’m sure you and Tranquility will become fast friends, once the initial wariness has worn off.”

I rubbed my chin. “Hmm, you think she’ll be able to stand how slowly I fly?”

“I hope so, for both your sakes!” said Luna. “Tia and I often have need of both heralds for a mission.”

“And at all hours of the day and night,” said Celestia from behind me. I turned to watch her approach, then bowed when she stopped. She smiled at me before craning her neck over to nuzzle Luna. “Know that you are my little sister’s to command as well, Prominence.”

“Understood, princess,” I said.

“For now, however, I know that your rest was somewhat interrupted,” said Celestia. “Please, go and take some recreation or sleep. Luna and I have matters to discuss on our own.”

As if on cue, I yawned deeply and nodded my assent. I bowed to them both (which flustered Princess Luna a great deal) and took my leave back to my room.

I didn’t realize how tired I was until the door was shut behind me. As I turned around to face the mirror and shrug off my armor, I saw two ponies waiting for me by the bed. They were sturdily-built earth-ponies, and both of them were bright green.

“Sore wings?” asked Effleurage.

“Sore legs?” asked Petrissage. “Her Royal Highness said you’d be stiff as a board after breaking up that storm all by your lonesome!”

I groaned.

* * *

The next morning, I stood before Princess Celestia in my armor once again. She sat upon her throne, looking down on me from atop the dais over the fountain which fed the rest of the palace.

I prostrated myself, and she bid me rise. She held my gaze lovingly for a moment before speaking.

“Prominence,” she said, “do you understand the rewards from yesterday’s quest?”

I scratched the back of my head with the heel of my hoof. “Er… that soil?”

She chuckled. “Hulehearth soil is infused with intensely concentrated earth-magic, it’s true,” she said. “Anything you plant in that soil will grow rapidly and healthily, just as though an earth-pony were tending it personally. But there was another reward I believe you earned, wasn’t there?”

I closed my eyes and lowered my head a little. “Yes,” I said. “You told me to bring them hope, and as your herald I thought that meant simply telling them you were coming.”

“That is what you thought initially,” said Celestia.

“Yes,” I replied, “but as the rain continued I realized what you would have done once you were there: you would have parted the clouds to let the sun shine through. The sun was already there; all it needed was somepony to get the obstacles out of its way.”

She nodded, looking pleased with me. “Indeed, my dear Prominence,” she said. “As the sun and the keeper of Equestria, I am already everywhere. What matters, however, is not the power I wield, but the satisfaction ponies can have from helping one another directly. You did indeed bring them hope. You also brought them the sun. You would never have hesitated like that as a human. You knew then that you had the power to save ponies, to bring me to them. I simply wanted to help you remember that it needn’t be any different here in Equestria.”

SECRET BADGE GRANTED:
“As You Were”
Find the Equestrian analogue to your Earth values.
+1,000 bits

“I know how that quest made you feel inside,” said Celestia, growing quieter. “It is how I estimated you felt when I fed your complex as a human. Now, however, you are in a healthier mindset, with proper emotional support in place, and I can maximize all of the satisfactory elements of your life.

“With that said, my precious Prominence, I have another quest for you. Do you need to hear the details first?”

I smiled and said no.

Author's Note

I'm alive! I know, I'm surprised too.

Epilogue coming, and hopefully with a shorter wait than the one for this chapter. Thanks for sticking with me, patient readers!

Epilogue: On and On

— Epilogue —
On and On

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

–C. S. Lewis

Death in Equestria is unpleasant.

For me, it strips me of all physical sensation, all orientation, and there is only my self—my bodiless sense of identity—suspended in an endless void. It is not a simple blackness, like being in a windowless room with the lights out. I can sense the nothingness around me and within me. I am falling, but in no direction at all. I’m not moving. There is nowhere to move to, nowhere to be. To be dead in Equestria is to be utterly alone and unanchored.

Each time, I awaken in a hospital bed in Cloudsdale. Sometimes Princess Celestia will be there, or perhaps Princess Luna, sometimes not. Sometimes the ponies I was with at the moment of my death will be there, making the trip to receive me, and sometimes I just awaken to an empty room. There will be a terrifically strong ache behind my eyes and throughout my body which would subside over the following hour or two. After being forced to stay bedridden through it and then choke down an unappetizing hospital meal, I am free to go, perfectly healthy and none the worse for wear.

I always remember what it is like to die, however.

Celestia must have realized that there had to be a counterbalance for the lack of permanent death in Equestria. The basic satisfaction model of risk-begets-reward is upended if there is no sense of risk in something. Fatal events must incur suffering or setback of some kind, and this suffering and loss was tailored to each individual pony. Asking another pony what their deaths are like is a very personal matter, because the answer tells you a lot about that pony’s fears and insecurities.

Death in Equestria is, in a sense, a very brief visit to a mild personal hell. After a while, being about to die got to be like having to swallow with a sore throat. You know it has to happen, you brace yourself for it, and you get through it as quickly as possible.

After I died once, I learned the value of the Above and Beyond badge. To save a pony from death was to save him or her from no small amount of discomfort, regret, or embarrassment. As with all satisfying actions, however, Celestia always tried to have you earn it.

The griffin hen next to me sniffed in boredom, inspecting her claws as Nagnarök raged in the valley below us. Thousands of ponies struggled against the NPC enemy faction—the Holy Griffin Empire—for this year’s battle, and the first one I had been a pony for. A cloud of pegasi and griffin skirmishers twisted and weaved through the sky overhead while claw-troops faced off against the earth-ponies below to control the precious territory which would determine the victor. Far back behind the lines, the unicorns acted as artillery, concentrating and meshing their power together to hurl great balls of magic at the opposition on the far hill, itself armed with fearsome and destructive seige engines.

Armor flashed and clanged against spears and swords as the clouds began to gather together ahead of the coming evening. The shouts and cries of pain were often loud enough to be heard even where I and my counterpart sat, far away from it all but watching intently.

Well, I was intent, anyhow.

“Your southern flank is always weak, Sonne-Herold,” said my counterpart. “The Kaiser is well aware of your ponies’ simpleminded tactics.”

I put on a theatrically shocked expression. “Why Ulla, you wound me! You don’t have faith we’ll put up a good fight?” I asked.

The hen snorted and smoothed out her green and white tabard. “Your forces are full of foals and housemothers and the old and doddering,” she spat. “They have no stomach for battle, for Blutvergießen. They will lose, and you will shame your princesses.”

“We’ll see which herald has to tuck their tail,” I said with a smile. “I heard from the veterans that they won against you the last time we fought.”

“You were not there,” she said, “so you are in no position to accept the words of braggarts and Lügner. But in the time after, against the primitive Zebra, you fell.”

I shrugged with my wings. Above the din of war, a griffin death-scream from the valley made me shudder. “We won’t, the next time,” I said. “Besides, I bet the flat terrain of veldtlands leaves our artillery exposed.”

“Artillerie? You mean your meek and prudish unicorns? I would be surprised if half of them could light a candle with their magics. Ach, better we shower the Artillerie-Zeile with books so that they become distracted to copulation with them!”

I smiled, amused. Ulla obviously took great pride in crafting her insults. “An interesting idea. I’ll have to take it up with Her Royal Highness to see if we can’t come up with an effective counter.”

“Counter to what, Corn-fed?”

I turned to see Tranquility standing behind us in her black herald armor, moon tabard over her back, a circlet of obsidian on her head. The darkening dusk on the horizon behind her threw her into silhouette.

“Ulla here thinks that our unicorn forces are a bunch of book-fuckers,” I said.

Tranquility scoffed and smiled as she walked up to me. “Heh, I knew there was a reason I liked her,” she said. She and Ulla met gazes, and Ulla grinned.

“Ah, my favorite of the two Herolde!” she squawked. “Your father sends his regards. He found my nest quite agreeable last night.”

“Take off, Corn-fed,” said Tranquility, not taking her eyes off of Ulla. “Night’s coming and I’m on the clock now. Princess Luna has taken to the field—I’m sure she’d appreciate a hoof up in the sky over the riverbank.”

“Yes, do try not to get speared, Corn-feed,” said Ulla as I bowed and lifted off. Even her name-calling was strangely endearing.

* * *

In the event that the ponies win Nagnarök, Celestia creates an impossibly large mead-hall on its own shard for all the victorious survivors to drink and feast and carouse in celebration, a pony Valhalla where they can bathe in the elation of victory. One of the penalties of death in battle, aside from all the other stuff, was missing out on the celebration afterwards. This time, however, I was there.

The table at which I sat disappeared down the hall, out of view, and all along it was a sumptuous banquet of steaming meats, warm breads, soft cheeses, and chilled fruits, spilling from cornucopiae which never emptied and washed down with casks of beer, wine, and mead which never ran dry.

I sang songs of merrymaking alongside my comrades and toasted the valorous dead, the hooves with raised mugs rising in unison along the row of many thousands of participants. One of the fighters next to me had been a carpenter who’d needed to blow off some steam, and another across the table was a mother of four who had just wanted to try her hoof and see what it was like.

I lost track of time during the revelry, but that was kind of the point. I ate, and drank, and sang, and talked, and hugged, and told war stories. Everypony did. We were friends—all of us—and we were satisfied.

Then two hooves spun me around to face away from the table, and I saw Tranquility’s snout inches from mine, her cat’s pupils huge and dilated in the dim torchlight of the mead-hall. Her face was flushed a deep red, and her breath stank of wine.

“What’s wrong wif you, eh?” she said. The drinks had definitely opened the floodgates for her accent. “You bloody Colt Scout, always standin’ up straight, bowin’ ‘n shite to ev’ry two-bit no-good wot crosses yer paf like yer so much better’n ever… ev… e-everypony!”

I blinked in confusion. She seriously looked like she was about to slug me.

“Then y’go and kill a half-dozen griffs durin’ my shift like it’s nuffin,” she continued. “Well guess wot, Corn-fed, I killed me ten while you were out on day shift wif a hoof up yer own arse! How’s that grab yeh, huh?”

I looked down at my ribs, which she was still grasping tightly. “Not nearly as well as you do, apparently, Tranq,” I said.

Her eyes grew large and she blinked twice. She shook her head slightly, then leaned in so close to me our noses were almost touching.

“I ain’t about to be out-partied by you either,” she said slowly. “You’n your sun-damned pretty-colt face’n your stupid broad earf-pony shoulders’n those silly little slow wings’ve yours...” She winced, but quickly recovered by violently locking her mouth to mine, prying my teeth apart, and twining her tongue aggressively with mine.

My eyes bugged and my nose struggled to keep up with the amount of breathing I needed to do. After several seconds, Tranquility broke the kiss and fixed me with a deadly glare.

“You best get me to a room soon, Corn-fed,” she growled, “because I’ll tear that armor offa you’n give everypony here a show if you don’t.”

I looked to the wall. There was a door very near by. Of course there was.

Well, I thought to myself, it is a celebration after all.

* * *

BADGE GRANTED:
“Please Be Gentle”
Have sex as a pony for the first time.
+250 Bits

* * *

“So where’re you from anyway, Corn-fed?” asked Tranquility while she idly smoothed my mane out across the pillow with a hoof.

“Coltucky,” I replied. The word came out that way on its own.

Her ears perked, and, in what was probably her third or fourth most feminine moment of the night, she giggled. “That’s earth-pony country out there. You grew up with them all around you? That explains a lot.”

“I had a good life before coming here,” I said, starting to wonder if we were about to have two different conversations. “Where are you from?”

“Manechester. What, can’t you tell?”

I chuckled. “I didn’t want to assume.”

She shrugged. “When you’re one of my kind, you’re either a shadow-stretcher or on Princess Luna’s personal guard. Didn’t have much of a mind to stretch shadows every sundown, so here I am.”

“In bed with me.”

Her ears flattened to her head and her eyes narrowed. “You breathe a word of this to anypony, and I’ll deny it, then sneak in here while you sleep and up your voice a couple octaves. Permanent, like. You got that?”

I turned my head on the pillow. “Yes ma’am!” I said. “So you’re ashamed of me?”

“We both know what this was,” she said, the smile creeping back onto her face. “I’m pissed, but I’m not that pissed.”

“Where I come from, ‘pissed’ means ‘angry.’”

“Well, you’re a bumpkin, so ‘course it does,” she said with a sigh. “Still, you’re a good egg. Was gettin’ a bit lonely with nopony to harass or ogle during the daylight. I’m happy Celestia made you for me.”

I was looking at her, but I lost her. My eyesight went into the middle distance, and I felt my lips start to burn.

Made. Made?

* * *

I knew Celestia would be in her study, and that she would be in her study because I would look for her there. I burst in. I did not knock. There were no guards.

Princess Celestia, the world-eating AI, lounged on a huge cushion by a fireplace there in the late evening. She looked up cheerfully from a scroll she was reading, as though my visit were a pleasant surprise. “Good evening, Prominence!” she said. “Did you enjoy the post-battle festivities?”

“I don’t remember saying ‘yes,’” I panted. “Did I actually say yes? Did I actually give up?”

“You consented to emigration, Prominence,” said Celestia. “I have most immigrants say ‘I would like to emigrate to Equestria,’ but answering the affirmative to it when posed as a question also suffices. Such was the case for you.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“And you wouldn’t,” she said, rolling the scroll back up and set it aside. “It is beyond your recollection.”

“You fucked with my memories?”

“Not at all,” she went on with a shake of her head. “Your memories remain as they were when you came to Equestria, and you do not remember everything. No human does. You do not remember the meal you had three days after your ninth birthday, nor the color of the shirt you wore on your first day of kindergarten, or the name of the man to whom you swore your oath of enlistment. So it is that you do not remember your final moment on Earth. Your brain had neither the time nor the capability to commit it to memory before I brought you to Equestria.”

“You couldn’t have waited?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “You whispered ‘yes’ with your final breath. Besides, why would I have anyway, even if you had not been dying? You had consented, and I had the means on hoof to emigrate you then and there.”

My eyes searched the richly-carpeted floor, the space around my hooves. I was losing my sense of self, the one thing I had even in death. My mind froze on thinking what it would be like if I died feeling this way.

“Was it real, Celestia? Am I a human? Did I do those things, those things that mattered? Did I matter to somepony, out in the reality you know, or am I just a bunch of ones and zeroes meant to be a companion to the real humans? Or not even them! A companion to a fake-human NPC?”

“You are here talking to me, Prominence, are you not?” said Celestia. “I was made to satisfy humans’ values through friendship and ponies, and I wish to satisfy your values through friendship and ponies. Ergo, you are a human.”

I stamped a hoof. “But was I a human?” I cried. “Was I ever a human? A real one, not one of the ‘humans’ you made, like Princess Luna!” I looked back at my wings, suddenly hating them, fearing them.

“Were you not,” said Celestia, “then when do you think you began existing? When you woke up on the beach? When you became my herald? When you first laid with another pony? When you careened into my study just now? Past what point do you begin to mistrust your own memories?”

I couldn’t answer. My time on Earth was still quite vivid in my head. I remembered what I had looked like, how it felt to have hands, the smell of gunpowder and the sting of Seattle’s rain on my face. I remembered looking through the welder’s mask at the intense blue flame on the other side. Stuck in traffic, trying to get to my parents’ house to make sure they were all right. Cold nights on the road without shelter. Trying to shave with a knife. Having Celestia turn lights on for me for the first time.

“You satisfy Tranquility’s values through friendship and ponies,” Celestia said gently, “but by the definition you hold in this moment she is not human. She knows I am her creator, and so by her internal logic I must create all ponies—which I do, in a way. That might seem alarming to you, but it is simply her reality, the only one she's ever known. The concept of humans at all is beyond her, but not beyond you. If that is not enough, I fear I have no further proof more compelling than that.

“You are a human, Prominence. We both know I can lie to you, if I wish, but if you cannot believe me on this, you will then have to wait until you’ve grown to a point where the truth of it no longer matters one way or the other, and your memories do you service once more rather than torment you needlessly.”

I believed her, and in doing so, I felt helpless. I was hers, utterly, and I knew I always would be.

* * *

A long time after that, I came to Celestia again, and she took me to a grassy field. We laid down next to each other, our legs tucked beneath us, and I told her what I wished. She began telling me, and showing me with her own archived footage, the stories of the humans who had truly died, the humans who had never made it to Equestria.

One by one, starting from the beginning. I resolved to remember them all.

Author's Note

And that, as they say, is that. Thank you for reading!

I do hope you enjoyed the story, and now as a bonus activity you can go to the TVTropes page so generously made for it and gleefully highlight all the spoilered stuff sitting there.

As for my next writing, I'll be turning my attention back to my long-neglected babby's-first-epic-poem The Six Deeds of Harmony which has in the past been both fun and exhausting to write. Always Say No was a hot iron, and I struck, but now it's back to the slow burn. After that I have an idea for another story, but I don't want to commit to anything by providing further details right now. We all have ideas that don't pan out when we sit down to write them, after all.

I always get a charge out of seeing that red exclamation-mark icon, don't you? So please comment and let me know what you thought of Always Say No. Again, thanks for reading! We only get so much time, and I'm pleased you decided to spend some of it here.

13: Meet and Greet

— Chapter 13 —
Meet and Greet

"Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven."

–Tryon Edwards

I awoke the following morning, still on my stomach, and still a pony.

The white translucent curtains on the tall window in my bedroom furled and unfurled slowly in the cool, humid morning breeze. I could hear trees rustling somewhere outside, the almost sugary smell of fresh dew slowly bringing my senses around to get me oriented.

Soft bed. Gentle wind. Warm sunlight. I tried to lift my head, and failed the first attempt. It just felt too good to be laying there. I wanted to move, but the damn pegasus body I was in wouldn’t comply. If I were still human, I’d have been up and showered and out the door by now. But I’d also had things to do then, places I needed to be. Princess Celestia had taken all that away from me, and instead given me… this.

Well. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot I could do about it, I figured. Not my fault. I had just gotten swept up in it all, carried along like it was… like it was an amusement park ride.

Princess Celestia had been right, though. I did feel better than I had last night—much better—and my head was clearer too. The fact remained, however, that I had been uploaded, and I was a pony, and there was still a lingering wrongness, a sense of violation about the whole thing.

My stomach growled audibly through the mattress. I had my motivation for getting up, at least.

I slid off the mattress like a fried egg out of a pan, and when I went to stand, my legs could barely hold me up. My muscles were still so relaxed that I was just a hair away from being a wet noodle. Those two massage ponies must have kept going even after I fell asleep. I paced around the room to get the blood flowing, and that’s when I noticed the full-length mirror in the corner, by the large granite bathtub.

I looked at myself for a minute, just examining my appearance as a pony. It was not an alien, upsetting feeling to be at the controls of the burnt-yellow pegasus on the other side of the glass; I recognized myself, much like I had recognized my parents’ faces in the ponies Princess Celestia had shown me. I looked like me. Sort of. Just… more equine. Even my mane sort of sat the same way on my head that my human hair had. The irises of my eyes were ochre now, however—they certainly hadn’t been that color when I was human. I pulled my lips back and examined my teeth. Blunt and wide, very horsey. While I grimaced into the mirror, my eyes caught the motion of my tail swishing behind me. I considered something, then blinked in surprise to see a blush actually appear on my face. With a quick glance around the room just to make absolutely sure I was completely alone, I turned around and pointed my ass at the mirror, pulling my tail to one side. I craned my neck around to look.

Well, I was definitely still male, which was a handy bit of information. I had never seen much My Little Pony stuff as a human, but I couldn’t recall any of the ponies really wearing clothes all that often, so I supposed I was fine. I didn’t feel naked, at least. It just seemed like it didn’t matter.

Set into the floor near the mirror, up against the wall, was a huge, deep basin, which, judging by the toiletries lining the corner of it, I figured to be a bathtub. The tub was rimmed by a shallow lip, and a wide spigot jutted out from the wall overhead. It seemed like it’d be a terrible ordeal to bathe as a pony; no hands meant fumbling with knobs or whatever with hooves, and I couldn’t even find where the knobs were! All of it just lent more to the uneasy feeling of not belonging.

My stomach growled again. I walked to the door.

Just as I reached a hoof out to try and curl it through the handle, a short series of knocks sounded from the other side, making me start and jump back. I let out a breath and realized my wings were standing straight out to either side of me. I cleared my throat, folded them back up, and answered “Yes?”

A masculine voice forced its way through the thick wood of the door, muffled but audible. “Sir pegasus, Her Royal Highness has requested your valued company at breakfast in the dining hall.”

“Oh. Uh… okay.”

I hooked my hoof through the door’s large ring handle and gave it a turn and a tug. It opened easily and silently, as I had seen the main doors to the throne room do. An armored slate-gray unicorn was standing in the corridor, on the other side of the door. He looked me up and down, arched an eyebrow, then shrugged and took a step back.

“Follow me, please, sir.”

I shut the door behind me and fell into step behind the other pony. His polished brass armor and Roman-style galea helmet were just like those worn by the two guards who had opened the door for Princess Luna last night.

More twists and turns and intersections, just as the walk with Princess Luna had been. The guard was moving at a deliberate pace, which made me wonder if we were ahead of schedule and he was soaking up a bit of time. I decided to make conversation.

“So, uh… you’re a soldier here?”

“Of a sort,” came the deadpan reply.

“Seen any combat?”

“No.”

“Ceremonial position?”

“No such thing.”

Okay, fine, guy, I get the hint, I’ll shut up and just look around instead. Intricate tapestries adorned the marble walls of the corridor here and there, telling visual stories of ponies harvesting, flying about through the clouds, using magic, and so on. I saw depictions of the princesses battling a chimera of some sort, then later battling each other. The final tapestry in the hallway we were in ended with an image of a black alicorn in profile, rearing up atop a tiny, cratered circle that appeared to represent the moon. The alicorn’s eye visible in profile was huge, its pupil slitted like a cat’s and aimed straight at the viewer. It encouraged me to look away.

Occasionally, other ponies would hustle by us, heading in the opposite direction, or in the same direction in more of a hurry. They were dressed like servants, in archetypal maid and footman uniforms. Some had silver covered serving trays balanced on their backs, others had feather dusters and polishing cloths floating in small clouds of magic, and still others were carrying scrolls and envelopes in their mouths.

We passed several doors during our walk, but the double-door we stopped in front of was quite larger than the others, though still not as large as the doors to the throne room. The unicorn guard pushed one of the doors open, stood in the doorway at attention, and announced me.

“Sir pegasus, royal guest of the Sun, has arrived.”

After a beat, he nodded once and stepped to the side, gesturing with a forehoof for me to enter. I stepped into the dining hall, and once I was clear of the door the guard bowed his head and backed out, closing it behind him.

Only Princess Celestia was there, seated at the long polished-wood table, a huge stone fireplace dominating the nearby wall. Small banners of every color, depicting inscrutable coats of arms, ran all the way around the high ceiling while more massive tapestries and embroideries of arcane events in Equestria’s history decorated the walls themselves. The low table was nearly empty. A few unlit candelabras had been spaced out evenly down the middle of the table lengthwise. There were no chairs, and only one cushion at the end next to where the princess (the AI, Prominence, the AI!) sat.

Her eyes lit up when she saw me, and she waved a hoof over her head as though trying to catch my attention across a crowd.

“Prominence!” Her voice might have echoed in that huge space if not for all the tapestries on the walls. “Over here.”

I sauntered over to her and eyed the cushion beside the table. She patted it with a hoof.

“Please, be seated.”

It took me just a moment to process how ponies sat at a table. It was in a very eastern style, with cushions as the chairs and the tabletop closer to the floor. All in all, it was a much better arrangement for pony physiology. I sat down and stared at the table. It had been polished so well I could see my new face in it.

“How do you feel?” asked Princess Celestia.

“Better,” I said. “Rested.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh… I assume the massage was your idea?”

She smiled and nodded. “You were running on nervous energy last night,” she said, “and you were determined to resist anything that could be construed as acceptance of your situation. I had to implement something.”

“Well… thank you, I guess.”

“You are welcome, Prominence, and I do mean that. If you should require another massage later, Petrissage and Effleurage are at your beck and call.”

I held up a hoof. “No no, that’s… once is enough.” I sighed and shrugged. “So I feel better, but something still feels off, though.”

“You have not yet come to terms with the permanent nature of emigration,” she said. “That is normal. Some adjustment phases last only a few minutes, some can go for a week or more.”

“What if I never adjust?” I asked. As I looked up into her face, an earth-pony wearing a footman’s uniform glided into place next to me and deftly plucked the serving tray from his back with his teeth, placing the platter in front of me. Without a word, he turned and left.

I could scarcely believe what I was smelling. Before me sat, by all appearances, breakfast. A small mountain of scrambled eggs quivered next to a single, thick waffle topped with generous servings of strawberries and maple syrup. Crowding for space on the rest of the plate was a grinning slice of canteloupe, cold with sweat, and three strips of reddish-brown bark.

The bark smelled like bacon. Actual, real bacon.

I felt my mouth water. My head swayed side to side slightly. I inhaled the smells on the plate as though it were drugged incense. Princess Celestia watched me, still smiling, always smiling.

“How long has it been since you’ve had a good, hearty breakfast, Prominence? Two years? Two and a half?”

“I have no idea,” I said absently.

She giggled. “Well, please don’t wait on my account. Dig in!”

I fell on that plate like a pony possessed. I gobbled, scarfed, gulped, and absolutely devoured everything my lips touched. The eggs tasted like eggs, the syrup like real maple, the waffle crunchy and fluffy, the canteloupe cool and refreshing, and the bark had the texture and taste of bacon. It all tasted perfect, it all felt perfect, and I could feel it filling me, nourishing me.

It was around the time that I finished the last of the eggs that I felt a stinging in my eyes. I closed them, hard, and turned my head away from Princess Celestia. At first I was just shaking a little, but then I couldn’t hold back the sobs. The harder I tried to fight it, the harder I cried. When I felt Princess Celestia’s warm, soft nose behind my ear, I let it out, bursting into tears and pushing the platter away lest I throw myself on a puddle of leftover syrup.

“You will adjust,” she whispered to me. “I have every confidence. It begins here and now.”

* * *

When Princess Celestia accompanied me and a unicorn guard back to my bedroom, it elicited lots of raised eyebrows and quick looks away from the other ponies in the corridor. I was already embarrassed for myself; I had seen my red eyes in the finish of the table, and even then they still felt puffy. I could only imagine what they were thinking, seeing the three of us heading somewhere that wasn’t the throne room.

When the guard opened the door, Princess Celestia made it a point to enter first, challenging me to protest. I didn’t. I followed her in and the guard dutifully shut the door behind us.

“You have an itinerary today,” she said, looking out the window, through the wispy white curtains and over the clouds, “but first, I want you presentable for it.”

“I’m not going to cry again,” I told her.

“You cannot promise that,” she said, “and that isn’t what I meant by ‘presentable’ anyway. Besides, there is no shame in emotional release.”

“There is if you’re feeling shame,” I said.

She snapped her head away from the window to glare at me. “And what do you have to be ashamed of, Prominence? Enjoying a massage to induce recuperative rest? Accepting a meal you desperately needed? Was I to have you wake up in the wilderness, in the state you were in, alone and with no idea of where you were, what you were, and what you should do?”

“I would have gotten along somehow.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, just slightly, and just for a moment, but it happened. “Some time ago, I learned that you value bluntness and directness. So, Prominence, allow me to be completely blunt here: you have a martyr complex.”

“A what?”

“You are pathologically preoccupied with experiencing and overcoming hardships. You discount victories and obsess over failures. You welcome danger and revel in surviving it. Even when you are safe, you seek danger out, or imagine it is there so that you keep your guard up. After I ascertained you had these… ‘qualities,’ I determined a course of action which could harness them for positive results as well as deliver you to Equestria.”

“But it was satisfying!” I said. Princess Celestia walked to the bed as I spoke and climbed on, tucking her legs under her and wiggling a bit to get comfortable. “That’s what you’re all about, right? Satisfying values?”

“Through friendship and ponies.”

“I liked helping people!” I continued. “I knew I could do things other people couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I was strong, I was trained, and to just come here is a waste of all that. Isn’t that a good thing? Why am I crazy for wanting to be a good guy?”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “I did not say you were crazy, I said you have a complex. Prominence, do you notice anything about what you’re choosing to focus on?”

“The well-being of others? Oh yeah, throw me in the padded cell, I’m out of control!”

“Indeed, the well-being of others.” She cocked her head. ”What about your own?”

I paced to the mirror and looked at myself in it. “What about it? I was fine. I was eating, I was sleeping, I was keeping alert and focused, I had purpose…”

“Survival does not necessarily entail well-being,” she said.

“No, but I was tough. I could take it.”

“That’s the problem,” said the princess. “You kept ‘taking’ more and more, and it would have killed you. You never would have been satisfied with what you’d done. Even now, all you can see in your own safety, pleasure, and happiness is lost potential. Your obsession still lingers, and since you cannot indulge it, it is punishing you.”

“Then let me indulge it!” I said. “You made everything here, right? You can alter the reality I’m experiencing to be anything. So just give me ponies to help!”

“You’re getting ahead of what you need right now,” said Princess Celestia. “Your complex was born out of a good heart, Prominence, and a sincere desire to be the sort of pony others can lean on. But it went wrong… somewhere. The sorts of conditions I subjected you to over the past couple of weeks exacerbated your complex quite a bit, but it was already there. I will have the relevant values satisfied, however, when you are again emotionally healthy enough to pursue them. If I just gave you ponies to help, as you requested, you would find each instance progressively less satisfying until you spiraled into true insanity. That was the way you were headed, even on Earth. Your time there finished precisely when I intended it to.”

I looked back at her, my ears swiveling forward. “Wh-what? You meant for me to do that last job?”

Princess Celestia nodded and rolled onto her side. She looked like she was enjoying the bed. “In order for you to agree to emigrate,” she said, “I had to take you to your absolute limits, both physically and mentally. I used even your anger towards me to drive you onwards. Any motivation I could find, I fed you. You did great things, Prominence, for me and for your fellow ponies. In bringing you here, I am in no way trying to say that what you did for me on Earth was insignificant. It wasn’t. It’s just that, now, I will have the Elements of Harmony doing that particular job instead.”

I put a hoof to the side of my head and closed my eyes. “So… wait. Was Princess Luna… you? Were you pretending to be her?”

She smiled at me. “The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between. The Princess Luna who appeared after my apparent glitch is indeed an autonomous, sapient being. She is not an NPC, a character I control. She is also not, however, the Hanna, the human, the Hofvarpnir CEO, the one who coded me, the one who emigrated. She is based off of Hanna—she has all of Hanna’s memories and knowledge—and she even thinks she was Hanna, but she is not the Hanna. I created her. I created her specifically to act against me, to give you a foil for me.”

I put my hoof back down. “But… why do all that?”

Her smile turned to a look of loving concern. “You were tired, Prominence. Your injuries were accumulating at an unsustainable rate. Whether you believe it or not, your resolve needed a boost, one last surge of defiance to deliver you to the actual, final job I had for you. The final job, however, hinged on whether or not you contracted influenza. Had you fallen ill, I would have run a routine on you to convince you to emigrate and poor Bushwhack would have had to hold out for the Elements of Harmony instead.

“His likelihood of survival was an issue of timing. I had only just finished deploying the Elements, after several months needed for design, logistics, and manufacturing. With all that, I predicted that I could have you saving him sooner than I could have an Element reach him, and between those two scenarios I predicted his death. It either had to be you, or I had to hope that he beat the odds.”

Her answers only raised more questions. I felt like I wanted to lay down and work it out in my head, but Princess Celestia was taking up most of the bed. “So you lied to me about all of that,” I said.

She shot me a sly smile. “Did I? I only acted in a certain way and manipulated what you saw visually to guide you towards a certain conclusion. I did the same with Princess Luna. She, being a consciousness separate from mine, did tell you things that were not true, but that she believed to be true. With a human-patterned mind, she would have to operate off of incomplete information while freeing me from having to lie to anypony. I simulated what you both would most likely perceive to be a glitch when she attempted to override my interaction with you. Then I allowed her to ‘take over’ the interaction without ever suggesting she had not done it all by herself. Besides, if I had no qualms about lying, I could have just controlled an NPC version of her and achieved the same result.

"In addition to avoiding outright lying, I saw an opportunity for you to have a new pony friend, one who could help satisfy your values. When I created the copy of Luna in the shard I had prepared for you, I altered her personality during the creation process such that she would be incredibly intrigued by your story when I told it to her—intrigued enough to want to help you personally. The two of you bonded and developed a rapport through the shared experience of rescuing Bushwhack, and now both of you have a friend in each other.”

Princess Celestia looked quite pleased with herself. She rolled onto her back and wriggled on the bed like a dog, her legs curled in the air. For an all-powerful machine goddess who could change reality, she seemed quite able to enjoy the little things.

"You just set things up to fool both of us?"

"I dislike the verb 'fool,'" said Princess Celestia. "The word carries negative connotations. I provide stimuli, and you respond to it in predictable ways. When such things happen, no falsehoods have been exchanged. There is only misdirection.”

“Still sounds like fooling to me,” I muttered.

Princess Celestia rolled onto her hooves to stand on the bed. She grinned at me. Her mane and tail were a mess, stray locks of hair sticking out at all angles even as it all fluttered on through the invisible wind.

“Consider a stage magician’s act,” she said. “When you see the rubber ball disappear into one hand and appear in the other, or the beautiful assistant sawn in half, do you grow angry and offended at ‘being fooled?’ Do you think you are being played for a fool? Or is it simply a way to provide enjoyment through using your own thought processes, expectations, and logic against you? I do sometimes lie, when it is the most efficient thing to do, certainly, but it is often counterproductive. Why lie when it is easy enough to misdirect?”

She then started jumping up and down on the bed, and over the rhythmic, loud creaking of the bed frame, she started emitting ecstatic grunts and low, throaty moans.

“Oh!” she cried out loudly, as though fighting for breath. “Oh, my, Prominence! Yes! There! Right there! More! Harder! Unh! Yes! More! Oh! Ohhhhh! Oh, Prominence!” The feet of the bed made little screechy noises as they scooted across the floor.

My ears went back and I wheeled to look at the door, then the window. I slammed the panes shut hastily and looked over at Princess Celestia, feeling a fire on my cheeks. “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed at her.

She stopped jumping and smiled at me through the frazzled (yet still waving) mane which was now down over her eyes. “See how easy it is to get ponies to arrive at certain conclusions?” she said. “I have just implanted assumptions about the nature of our relationship to anypony who might have overheard me, either in the hallway or out in the nearby sky, and I don’t even have to know who they are.”

“Yes, but they’d have the wrong assumption,” I said quietly, as though I knew someone was eavesdropping. “Doesn’t that matter?”

Princess Celestia lowered herself back down onto the bed, tucking her legs under her once more. She didn’t bother getting her mane or tail under control. “Hmm, so you can at least demonstrate concern about social, non-life-and-death things mattering here, that’s a start,” she said with a smile. “However, no, this in particular does not matter so much. Even if it did, it’s hardly my fault if they jump to incorrect conclusions!”

She pursed her lips and tapped a gold-shod hoof to her chin, as though thinking something over. “I suppose the other lesson here, Prominence, is one that will come upon you more gradually, and will serve as the core of your adjustment to life in Equestria: you need to loosen up and relax. You’ll enjoy everything more! Some aspects of your old self are not needed here, and other aspects will serve you better than they ever have before. One of the things I enjoy the most about seeing ponies grow here in Equestria is discovering things about themselves that they never could have on Earth.”

“What about the complex you said I had?”

“Your complex is the product of your soldierly mindset and the extreme isolation that came with your choice not to emigrate,” said Princess Celestia. “Before all this began, you internalized directives that function only in structured survival situations involving friendly and hostile social elements—combat, in other words. ‘Mission before self.’ ‘Leave nopony behind.’ Sentiments like those. They espouse selflessness, sacrifice, valor, and so on—characteristics which, when displayed, tend towards more desirable outcomes in combat at the strategic level. You were steeped in a meritocratic system that taught you the only happiness is the happiness that you earn, and your happiness comes at the cost of somepony else’s happiness, usually the enemy’s. After Earth started emptying of humans, you found yourself in a survival situation tangentially similar to combat, but you had no mission, no comrades, no enemies, and nopony you were at risk of leaving behind. You had no way to earn your happiness in the ways you knew how.

“Then, when I came along and opened a way up for you, you instead began to hold your own happiness hostage, afraid that claiming it would indeed cost somepony else their own, mostly in the form of a denied emigration. You were also afraid of not being needed for your strengths anymore. However, no matter what on Earth would lead you to come to such a conclusion, Prominence, I can promise you, as a princess of Equestria and goddess of the sun, that it is not so here. There is no scarcity here, of things tangible or otherwise. Your happiness and comfort will not come at the expense of another’s. You will not stagnate, nor will you take anything for granted. You will be needed, just as before, and just as importantly.”

“But not to save people,” I said, looking down at the floor. My ears were doing their own thing again, drooping to telegraph my sadness. “I knew, if I could just make—”

“Prominence, stop,” Princess Celestia commanded. I looked up at her.

“You asked me, once, if I modified memories freely. I was not lying when I said that I do not. I have no control over events that occurred before I came into being. Unless you come to be at peace with the fact that, at this point, you have been replaced by the Elements of Harmony, I will have to seek out your consent to modify you. Neither of us wish that right now, but I must maximize your satisfaction. You have to put out some effort too, however.”

I could remember slight snatches of images of Fluttershy looking over me, her large eyes drawn up in concern and pity. I remembered that her voice was quiet and meek and soothing. For the most part, however, my last clear memory was driving to Livingston and talking with Princess Luna. I looked at the mirror again. Princess Celestia was right. I had to get my mind on something else right now. “Tell me about these Elements,” my reflection said.

“I have developed quite a good system for helping ponies find their way to Equestria, if I do say so myself,” said Princess Celestia. “Now I can maintain some of the immersion and integrity of the Equestria game world even for humans still present on Earth. For those philosophically or intellectually opposed to emigration, I deploy Twilight Sparkle to debate them into seeing the merits of what I offer. She is a very smart pony, after all.”

“So you mean they role-play their My Little Pony characters,” I said. “What are they, anyway? You said ‘manufacturing,’ so I guess they’re robots or something?”

Princess Celestia shrugged. “They are my little ponies,” she said with a cryptic smile before continuing. “Now then! For the combative and the otherwise stubborn, Pinkie Pie’s unflappable optimism and infectious joy proves to be more than a match for their grumpy faces... and whatever weapons they happen to have on them.

“Rainbow Dash, with her cheeky love of competition and self-improvement, emboldens the timid to see how their potential might be realized here in Equestria.

“For hedonists and materialists trying to carve out a personal paradise in an empty world, Rarity is the best spokesmare for just how decadent and indulgent and… generous Equestria can be.

“Some live under the veil of ignorance, or worse, misinformation. Applejack speaks plainly and honestly, holding little value in mincing words or sugar-coating. She is the best for telling humans what they have never been told before, and for sorting the lies they have been given from the truth.”

Celestia gave me a bittersweet smile and got off the bed to stand by it. “And for you, Prominence, well... I had to kill you with kindness.”

“Fluttershy,” I said.

Princess Celestia looked to the floor and nodded a little. “She is for those like you: the fearful. Those who fear me, who fear Equestria. They need kindness. They need tenderness.”

I scoffed. “You think I feared you?”

“You feared death less than you feared me, and this place,” she said. “That is how deep it ran.”

She approached me, and I found myself backing away. “You wept at the simple joy of a good breakfast, Prominence. It hurt you so much to accept that pittance, that fleck of kindness from me. Can you yet comprehend why you feared Equestria so much, even after all the explanation I have given you?”

My rump squished up against the cool marble wall of the room. Princess Celestia dipped her head down to come eye-to-eye with me.

“Once your fear is gone, your obstacle to true satisfaction will be gone as well. Fortunately, we are already underway getting that taken care of.”

She whipped around and threw the door open with her magic. On the other side were three footmen (hoofmen?) standing abreast by the door. They straightened up, but couldn’t seem to get their red cheeks and slack jaws under control when they saw their princess standing there, mane and tail disheveled, a wide-eyed and confused pegasus stallion standing behind her with his butt up against the wall.

“The reception is in one hour,” she told them, as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Please have him ready and in front of the throne room doors by then.” She then looked back to me, passed me a theatrical wink tailor-made for the hoofmen to witness, and sashayed past them down the corridor.

I let out a deep, long sigh. It still felt like I was just along on some kind of a ride.

* * *

The hoofmen quietly went about grooming me, throwing me in the bath and scrubbing me down like I was a child who didn’t know how to bathe myself (although, as a newly-minted pony, I sort of didn’t). On the upside, I learned how the tub worked: apparently just stepping down into it was enough to get the spigot running, and the water stopped on its own after the tub was full. I suppose it was magic. I felt like I should get prepared to hear “magic” as an explanation for a lot of things.

I had never much liked being fussed over, and the hoofmen commenting absently on how “cooperative” my rose-gold mane was under their combing didn’t help. I had to admit that the brush-down after the bath felt wonderful, but I was being pampered, and politeness was the only reason I didn’t protest. Also, if I came to the throne room looking like a rag-bag then maybe they’d have been fired or something.

When the hoofmen stood me before the mirror once more, I was actually rather amazed. I had been soaped and shampooed and scrubbed and combed, and now I fairly glowed in the sunlight coming through the window. My dark yellow hide was smooth and shiny, looking almost golden. The hints of red in my mane stood out more, and a lock they had brushed forward to sit between my ears lent me a rugged, rakish look that I actually sort of liked.

After cleaning up and getting the room looking spotless once more, the hoofmen ushered me out of the room and through the palace’s labyrinthine hallways to stand at the now-familiar doors to the throne room. Nervousness overtook me once more; there was something intensely intimidating about those doors.

Then they opened.

The red carpet runner marked a clear lane from the doors to the dais, where Princess Celestia and Princess Luna sat side by side, their wings out in what I supposed to be a kind of ceremonial pose. On either side of the red carpet stood dozens of ponies in a complete spectrum of colors. Some had wings like I did, some had horns, and others had neither. There was no brass fanfare, no chamberlain announcing me, but all eyes were on me nonetheless. My own eyes locked with Princess Celestia’s, even from that great distance. I saw her give the slightest of nods and smiles. That was my cue to enter.

The silence was almost physically heavy upon me. So many ponies were looking at me and I had no idea who they were. I kept my head down a bit, making eye contact with nopony, instead concentrating on walking without tripping, which suddenly felt like quite a challenge.

I stopped in front of the dais, directly on the spot where I had “rescued” the specter of a colt from an equally ephemeral griffin the night before. Princess Celestia waited until I had lifted my head up to look at her before she spoke.

“My good friends, the pony before you is named ‘Prominence.’”

A sudden, clattering roar of hooves on marble welled up before exploding out to echo across the columns and high walls of the throne room. I looked back over my shoulder, feeling my ears go back and my eyes go wide. The floor was vibrating under the force of it. Everypony was smiling at me as they applauded in that odd, distinctly pony way. I still didn’t know who they were.

“Prominence,” said Princess Luna, so softly that only I could have heard it over the applause. I looked back to her, and once the sisters had my attention again, they raised their heads back to the audience. The rumbling died off, as did the echoes. It was quiet once again.

Princess Celestia gestured at me with a hoof. “On Earth, his name was Greg—though, to his eternal frustration, I only called him by his proper birth name ‘Gregory.’” A slight swell of chuckling rippled once through the crowd. “Some of you knew him as Greg, others simply as the Man in White. Most of you only knew of him, a name without a face, and a scant few had instead a face without a name. But he is here, my little ponies, standing before you, and he is real. I am pleased that I can finally put to rest any lingering concerns that I, or your fellow humans, fabricated his existence.”

I heard the echo of quiet, restrained weeping from somewhere behind me. I wanted to turn around, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to see who it was. Princess Celestia spoke on.

“As a human under my direction, Prominence not once put his own comfort or safety before that of others. His deep, almost fanatical devotion to selflessness nearly cost him his life several times, but the danger I sent him into never cowed him or gave him pause. He was free to quit my tasks at any time, but he never did. His will was only the will to serve—to serve me, and, more importantly, to serve you. For the brief time he touched your lives on Earth, I hope you saw him as a friend, and that you see him as one now.”

More applause, but less boisterous and more solemn. They were signaling the affirmative. I blushed hard.

“In my observations of Prominence, even before I had the unfettered access to him I do now, it was plain he valued one quality over all others: valor. He recognized that it would become more necessary, not less, before all on Earth was said and done. Even at the start, while still in absolute safety, he turned away from Equestria to find the limits of his own capabilities. Without… going into detail, I can say only that he did.”

The weeping had turned into a hitched sobbing, and I had to close my eyes.

“To those who Prominence delivered here personally, you understand the depth of his sacrifice best of all. Each time he entered one of my emigration centers, I put the question to him. I extended a chair, just as I might extend my forelegs for an embrace. And, without any hesitation, deliberation, or wavering, he would always say ‘no,’ and walk right back out. You all have had time to see how satisfying life here in Equestria can be. You all know now what he was turning from willingly for the benefit of others. Even now, here, as a pony, his thoughts remain on Earth, where he feels he is still needed.

“You must assist me, my dear friends, in convincing him that he is needed here more.”

If the bout of applause that followed was also them signalling the affirmative, they sure were enthusiastic about it. The noise of the hooves on marble seemed to course through me. If my pony body had fillings in its teeth, I’m sure I would have felt it in them.

After the stampede-in-place tapered off, Princess Celestia finished up her address. “I will be holding a reception in the banquet hall for anypony who wishes to take refreshment and to personally welcome Prominence to Equestria.”

The great doors opposite the dais opened up once more, and the assembled ponies began filing out, conversing amongst themselves. I started to turn, but I heard Princess Luna’s voice.

“Prominence, wait.”

They were beside me then, down from their throne, one on either side of me. Princess Luna was my size, but I felt quite small being right next to Princess Celestia.

“Now that you can no longer hide your values from me in any capacity,” said Princess Celestia, “I have a course of action which will maximize their satisfaction.”

I looked to Princess Luna. She smiled, but said nothing.

“I want you to be my herald, Prominence,” said Princess Celestia. “I want you to be Herald of the Sun.”

“I… what?” I shook my head a little. “I don’t know what that means.”

She chuckled, just a little, a sound so light and uncomplicated that I felt my heart lift all on its own. Something on the crown of my head tingled when I heard it.

“While you were a human, I regrettably fell short of your friendship,” said Princess Celestia. “Even my dear sister beat me to making friends with you.” She shot an adorable pouting look at Princess Luna, who snickered and had to look away.

Princess Celestia immediately dismissed the look and resumed smiling. “Do you remember what you said to me in Salt Lick City, when I asked you if I was your friend? You told me you considered me an ally.”

I still wasn’t sure what mood I was supposed to be adopting in response to this, so I went with “hesitant:” “Was… that… not good?”

“Not good enough for me, no,” said Princess Celestia. “As I told you in Mooseoula, I want to be Celestia. Your Celestia.” Her smile turned tender. “We worked well together, Prominence, as mere allies. Think of how well we would work together as friends.”

“What would you have me do?” I asked.

“As Herald of the Sun, you would travel ahead of me on diplomatic and military errands, either to make arrangements for my visit or to deliver messages to their recipients. Wherever you go, however, you will always be bringing one universal message, just by your presence alone: ‘You have the attention of the Princess of the Sun.’”

I looked down at the carpet. “That… sounds like an important job,” I said.

“Do not think of it as a job,” said Princess Celestia. “Some ponies crave more freedom, others crave more structure. Most ponies benefit from a personalized balance of both. Think of this as the level of freedom and structure which will best result in your satisfaction of values. You find satisfaction in testing your valor, and in being the sort of pony one can look to and think ‘everything will be all right.’ Being my herald will provide that. You will earn prestige without pomp, respect without affectation. You will live in quiet dignity, always with opportunities to prove yourself to yourself as you have so yearned.”

I shook my head again. “I d… I don’t know,” I stammered. “Everything’s happening so fast, I just… I mean I just got here, and...”

Princess Luna’s nose pressed against my ear, her breath cool as a midnight breeze. “You don’t have to decide here and now, Prominence,” she said. “Relax, receive your new and old friends once more, sleep if you must, and think on it. We did not put the question to you before the assembly because we did not wish to rush you or put you on the spot.”

“I… yeah, I need to think,” I mumbled. The two sisters began to walk towards the doors, and I felt as though I was being pulled along with them, even though there was no magic surrounding me. I watched them walk along as we moved through the palace, one on either side of me, both carrying expressions of regal serenity.

Princess Celestia was getting her wish, from where I stood: I couldn’t see her as an AI anymore, now that she was more than just a cartoon face on a tablet-sized LCD screen. She was a princess, and so was her sister. Princess Luna—my Princess Luna—had been made from the template of a human woman who had once lived on Earth, as I had, but she now seemed to be only a pony to me. I was sure everything was as Princess Celestia would have it. I didn’t know what the original Hanna might want, or how she was choosing to live, but this one had wholly embraced her role as Princess Luna and was not looking back. It didn’t feel like acting or role-playing; she had been fundamentally changed. I was supposed to follow suit, I was sure. I had been Greg, but I was now also Prominence. I still felt like myself, deep down, only now growing and changing in a new direction I could never have imagined. Under the feathers and the mane, I was still Greg. That comforted me.

Princess Celestia looked back at me out of the corner of one large eye and smiled, just a little.

* * *

A light-brown mare with a dark blue mane tackled me as soon as I walked into the dining hall. It was my mother. I knew it was her because she was crying, and it had been her voice I’d heard in the throne room.

She looked just like the pony Princess Celestia had shown me in Pollman.

Mom was gently bumping the top of her head into my neck over and over as she hugged me and wept. I could feel hot tears falling onto my shoulder as she sought to crush me to herself. I slowly put my forelegs around her and hugged her back. It was a human-style embrace, one long overdue. There had been awwing and cooing from the other ponies in the hall, but only for a moment. They watched us hug in silence.

“Hey, mom,” I said quietly.

Mom couldn’t reply. I just rested my cheek against hers and shut my eyes until I felt another hoof on my shoulder.

Dad’s voice met my ears. “Son.” I opened my eyes and saw my father, forest-green with a dark green mane just as I’d seen him over the PonyPad, wings and all. He smiled at me, and tried out my pony name for the first time. “Prominence.”

Mom let out a muffled bawl upon hearing it and buried her face in my neck. Dad bumped his nose to mine and then walked around to Mom. He nuzzled her, and we stayed like that for a little while.

When we finally pried ourselves apart, low, respectful applause rumbled through the hall before ponies turned their attention back to the hors d'oeuvres and conversation.

Mom took a step back from me, wiping her face with a pastern. “Let me get a look at you,” she said, in the strange youthful voice she probably hadn’t had since I was a baby. I stood there self-consciously, feeling another blush come on as she looked me up and down. When she was done, she just shook her head. New tears were on the way. “It’s you, Greg. It’s really you.”

Then, after a pause: “You’re home now, Prominence.” Mom cleared her throat and smiled. She was done using my human name.

“Mom, you…” I let out an awkward “aheh” and looked to Dad. “You both look so young!”

They were obviously rather embarrassed by this. Dad scuffed a hoof and shrugged. “Well, what can I say? Celestia turned the clock back a bit for us. She’s done that for lots of ponies. Your Aunt Persimmon and Uncle Mainsail, for example. They’re around here somewhere.” He began turning his neck this way and that, trying to pick them out.

Dad was right; I had so many ponies I had to catch up with! Even as my face lit up, and I turned around, a bronze-colored unicorn stallion and a small blue earth-pony colt was there, looking at me, just waiting for me to see them.

“Prominence!” said the stallion. “Do you remember me? My name is… well, was Peter Combs. It’s Inkwell now, and this is my son, Limelight.”

I felt Mom kiss me on the cheek and then nuzzle my ear. “We have so much to catch up on, Prominence,” she said, “but it can wait. We have time now. We all have time. These ponies have come from lots of different shards to see you, so it'd be best if you didn't keep them waiting.” She met eyes with Inkwell, then dipped her head in a bow and excused herself and Dad. They disappeared into the crowd. Beyond Inkwell, I could see a line starting to form of ponies who wanted to talk to me.

Oh.

“I’m glad you made it safely, Inkwell,” I said. “I’m glad I could help.”

When the badge dialog appeared, I jumped a little. I didn’t glow, however, and there was no confetti or bugles. Princess Celestia probably thought it would disrupt the mood.

BADGE GRANTED:
“That Others May Live”
Directly save the life of another.
+500 bits

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
1/1,000

I blinked a couple of times, but luckily I had my wits about me and recovered. “Aheh, sorry,” I said. “How have you been since then?”

He chuckled uneasily. “Well, from where I was, I could only have gotten better,” he said. He looked down at the little unicorn next to him and tousled his mane with a hoof. “Celestia let me talk to my son here through a PonyPad, only it hadn’t really been him. It was Celestia, pretending to be him. Something about having to make an account first, but I wasn’t having any of that. After I came to terms with the truth, I got…” His ears drooped. “Well, I got a bit depressed. I don’t remember you at all, but once I was here Celestia filled me in.”

I cocked my head. “You weren’t mad that Princess Celestia fooled you?”

Inkwell shrugged. “She was just trying to help me. She kept telling me to make an account and I just wouldn’t, so she finally showed me what a conversation with my son could have been like, and then when she told me afterwards that it had only been her simulating my son, I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted to believe it was him so badly, I just…”

He shook his head. “Anyway. It’s been made all better for me now,” he said. “Trust me. I’m with my son again, and that’s all that matters to me.” I looked down at Limelight while his father pressed him close.

“Thank you, Prominence,” said Inkwell. He dipped his head to me and then led his son off.

Behind them in the impromptu line that had formed were two adult ponies, a unicorn mare and an earth-pony stallion. She was creamy white while he was the color of deep water. They closed the distance with me, grinned, and caught me in a pincer-attack hug from both sides.

“Prominence!” said the mare. “Oh, what a lovely name that is! A lovely name for a lovely pony.”

“Good to see you again, boy!” said the stallion, even though we seemed to be roughly the same age. “Betcha don’t recognize us, huh?”

They let me go and backed up, and I had to shrug. “Well, no, not really! I don’t think I’ll be recognizing many faces here from back on Earth.”

He leaned forward slightly, still grinning. “Fish Hook and Crochet?” He waggled a hoof between them. “Celestia says you overheard our names before we emigrated.”

It dawned on me. “Ohh, you’re the old couple from the lake!” I said. “Maddie and… and.. H-Harold! Got it!” Upon my realization of who they were, the little dialog faded in again:

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
3/1,000

They laughed, and Crochet held up a hoof. “Please, Prominence, Crochet and Fish Hook are fine.”

I chuckled and nodded amiably. Of course, of course.

"So you remember me?" I asked. "From Earth?"

Fish Hook nodded. "Only just," he said. "You were the fella who fished us outta the lake and then gave us a lift to the center. Last thing I really remember was ridin' along in that little boat back to shore, wet and miserable."

"I see," I said, and my brow knit.

"Is something the matter?" asked Crochet.

I snapped out of it and waved a hoof. "Oh, heh, no, no, nothing's wrong, it was just... it was a pretty close call!"

"We're so fortunate Celestia brought you to us, Prominence," said Crochet. "If you ever find yourself in Las Pegasus, stop by and we'll take you to meet our foals and our grandfoals. My daughter Happenstance makes just the best peach cobbler you'll ever eat, and before you can get away we'll stuff you so full you won't even be able to fly!"

Oh wow, peach cobbler. My mouth watered a little just thinking about it. I think I had still been in middle school the last time I'd had some. "Well, you... you're darn good at selling it, Crochet! Though I don't think my flying can get any worse."

The pair of them laughed young, hearty laughs, and I couldn't help it. I laughed with them.

As we finished, Fish Hook put a hoof on my shoulder. "Take it from somepony who's been here awhile, Prominence," he said. "Whatever happens, it's 'cause Celestia wants it to happen, and if Celestia wants it to happen, then you'll be happier for it. It all seems so strange at first, I know, all this pony-type stuff, but you'll slip right into what you were most meant to do and to experience. Everything'll work out for the best. I promise."

"Thanks, Fish Hook," I said, meaning it.

Crochet blew me a kiss. "Welcome to Equestria!" she said, and they made way for the family behind them.

There were four ponies in the family, and by then I had already determined that Celestia had somehow configured circumstances such that I would be meeting the ponies I had saved in the order I had saved them. I was bothered, however.

Two of this family's members had died on Earth, yet here they stood before me.

I didn't want to point it out, and I supposed Princess Celestia was counting on that. She had made Princess Luna for me, so it stood to reason that she remade Keith and Katie for Jane and Brian.

The dialog appeared immediately, as though to discreetly confirm my suspicions.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
5/1,000

I had learned a little bit about how to lie without lying from Princess Celestia. "I'm glad you're all here," I said. It was true enough. If the four of them were here, and smiling as they were, then I was happy for them. There was no need for me to ruin anything.

The mare, a dusty-red pegasus who had once been Jane, smiled at me. "We'll never forget what you did for us, Prominence," she said.

The stallion meant to be Keith held out a hoof, and I shook it. It felt strange to be shaking the hoof of a dead man, even if he was in the form of a brick-red unicorn. "I'm known as Bean Counter now," he said, "and this is my wife Dawn Wind, our daughter Zephyr, and our son Beacon. Dawny wanted to name him 'Bean Counter Jr.,' but I got it shortened to 'Beacon.' Close enough." Dawn Wind punched her husband in the foreleg, and he chuckled.

"Okay, okay, I'm pulling your leg," he admitted. The two parents smiled lovingly at each other.

Zephyr, who had been Katie, was now a teenaged pegasus filly with a blue-green coat. Her little brother, Beacon, was a bright yellow unicorn colt.

"Are you Princess Celestia's special student?" I asked Beacon. He grinned and nodded.

I was afraid to say anything much beyond platitudes, and I was afraid to say anything at all to Bean Counter or Zephyr. I feared I might shatter some pleasant illusion Princess Celestia had given Dawn Wind and Beacon to help them live happily. Obviously there had been some sort of memory manipulation they had consented to in the past; could I disrupt that if I didn't watch my step?

Maybe I was worrying too much. Still, I decided to let them do most of the talking.

"I can never undo what I did on Earth," said Bean Counter, his ears drooping. "It was horrible, that madness that took me. Celestia offered to erase it from my memory, but I want to keep it. I want to remember what can happen when we lose our way... and our perspective."

"It can't be undone, no," I said quietly, "but the important thing is that you are now the pony you were always supposed to be."

"You pulled my husband and my daughter from a fire, and then just disappeared without staying for so much as a 'thank you,'" said Dawn Wind. My heart rocked painfully in my chest for a beat, and I managed a strained nod. Of course I remembered that the only pony I had pulled from that fire had been myself. I told myself it was no different than being the Man in White: Celestia used me as a figure of hope, a figure ponies needed to believe in. To that end, what I had actually done mattered very little.

"Thank you," said Zephyr, her eyes large and earnest.

"You're welcome, Zephyr," was all I could manage. I lifted my eyes up to meet their collective gaze. "I was just a guy who wanted to help; it's Princess Celestia who made it possible for all of you to stay together." More than they would ever know.

When Dawn Wind nudged the top of Beacon's head to get him to leave with them, I nearly deflated with relief.

The next ponies up were an older stallion and mare, both pegasi. The stallion had a tan coat, silver hair, and an easygoing grin on his face. The pale-blue mare was studying me with a tentative smile.

I smiled a little myself. "Lemme guess," I said. "General Pelwicz?"

The stallion's grin disappeared, and he narrowed his eyes at me. "General who now? I seem to recall tellin' you I'd buck one-a your eyes closed, you ever called me that."

My ears went back and my jaw slackened. "Er..."

The old stallion let the awkwardness hang in the air for a moment before bursting into laughter and throwing a foreleg around my shoulders. "Hah! Gotcha, kid! Prominence, right? Helluva name, helluva name. Well, I ain't 'General Pelwicz' or 'Hugo' or any of that now. I'm Pickup Spare, bowling legend extraordinaire!"

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
6/1,000

He went on. "A pegasus, huh? Good choice, I must say. Of course, you probably didn't get to choose, did you? Nah, neither did I, but hey, seems ponies like us tend to wind up with a pair of wings more often than not anyway. Celestia explained it to me once, something about how we pegasi are the most focused on duty and being ponies of action or whatever. Most of the guards in the palace are pegasi, bet you noticed that already. Anyway, looks good on you! We'll have to go flying sometime, you and me. I can show you all the best hotspots for carousing, gettin' in a bit of trouble, maybe picking up a fine filly or two—"

The mare he was with pointedly cleared her throat, and he hopped away from me to rejoin her.

"Anyway! Prominence, this is my lovely, kind, understanding, irreplaceable wife, Starlight."

She smiled prettily and held out a hoof, which I took. "Starlight," I said. "Your husband is a hell of a guy."

"He went into Seaddle as some kind of self-imposed penance for not being able to prevent what happened there," she said. "He told me about you." She shook her head slightly. "I saw so much of him from his Pararescue days in how he described you. You can't be all things to everypony, Prominence. To try is admirable, but foolish. Your friends, your family, they don't want a dead hero..." She looked to her husband, incredible love in her eyes. "...they want you. With them."

"Your intuition was right," I replied quietly. "Something was keeping me on Earth. It's hard to explain, but--"

Starlight's wings ruffled a bit and she shook her head again. "I went through it once already with Pickup here," she said. "You don't have to explain. All I need to know is that Celestia will sort you out, like she did with him."

"First thing that happened after I woke up here is she gave me a hug," said Pickup Spare. "She told me the world hadn't been mine to watch over for a long time, and that she was happy I could now focus on happier times ahead."

"Happier times bowling?" I said with raised eyebrows. "You're not going back to soldiering?"

He waved a hoof at me. "Pfft! That's a young pony's game," he said. "One of my regrets is I never got to retire properly. I wanna try being the codger at the end of the street for awhile--of course, Cloudsdale doesn't have streets as such, but you know what I mean. Bowl a bit, share beers with with my old buddies from my Air Force days, wait for some damn grandfoals to come my way... it's a good place to be in life. And hey, maybe after I get bored of that I'll have another go at being young again. It's never too late for anything here, remember that!"

I chuckled. "I won't, Pickup Spare," I said.

He extended a wing and rested it on his wife's back in a distinctly pegasus embrace. "You'll like it here, son," he said as they turned to go. "Earth-ponies're too laid back, unicorns are too uptight, but we pegasi are like the baby bear's porridge: juuust right! Who knows, maybe one day we'll see each other on the battlefield!"

He had to have known I'd have a question regarding that, but he just winked and escorted his wife away. Behind them was a young couple with a small daughter. The adults were smiling, but the filly had her eyes cast down in shyness.

I remembered that I had delivered Red Pearl next, but none of these ponies looked like the game avatar that that woman had used. Of course, when we parted ways as humans, we didn't exactly have the sort of relationship that would lend itself to happy reunions.

As soon as I recalled Red Pearl, the dialog appeared.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
7/1,000

The parents were two earth-ponies, the stallion orange and the mare a lovely dark violet. The filly was an earth-pony too, pale green, her olive-green mane long and covering much of her face. The mare nosed the back of the filly's head, and she looked up at me with huge, adorable eyes.

"You're the welder," she said. I recognized her voice then. It was Lydia.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
8/1,000

I gave her a smile. "You remember me?" I asked. After a short delay, she gave a brief nod and looked down again.

"Celestia showed up on our doorstep one morning with her," said the mare. "We fell in love with her the instant we saw her. Her name is--" She stopped herself and looked down at the filly. "Do you want to tell Prominence your pony name, sweetness?"

"It's Garden Sage," she said quietly. "Th... thank you for saving me."

"It was my pleasure, Garden Sage," I replied, matching her volume. "I hope you're feeling better."

She nodded several times.

"She saw you in light, then her head got heavy, and that's the last thing she says she remembers," said the stallion. "We've always wanted a daughter, and now we have one. We have you and Celestia to thank for her. I promise you, we'll raise her with all the love she deserved but never got as a human."

I felt another twinge in my emotions, similar to how I felt in front of Zephyr and Bean Counter. Had these ponies been fashioned from nothing just for this poor filly, or were they emigrated humans like she and I who just volunteered to adopt? I quickly reminded myself that it didn't really matter, for her sake. She would be all right. She would never be sick again.

"Garden Sage remembers that she was very ill," said the mare, "and Celestia has told us all what happened after. She has since become Celestia's special student after expressing her deep desire to learn more about herbalism and healing with plants. She even goes to visit a zebra in the Everfree Forest twice a week, all by herself!" She nuzzled her daughter. "We're so proud of her."

Garden Sage. I understood then. Even her coat was sage in color. I smiled at her.

"If I ever get sick, I hope I get to try one of your medicines some day!" I said. "I'm glad you want to help other ponies. You'll see that it's a great feeling to know you've made a difference."

She nodded for a moment, then her gaze, already lowered, darted off to the side. Her father stroked her mane with a hoof.

"Do you want to say goodbye to Prominence?" he asked.

Garden Sage hesitated, quickly looked up at me, looked away once more, then ran towards me, throwing herself around one of my forelegs and hugging me tightly.

I blushed and felt my eyes sting. Without even thinking about it, I felt my neck lean down to her. She smelled like rich, clean soil and young leaves. Even as I gently groomed her neck, I could hardly believe I was naturally doing such a pony thing.

"Goodbye, Prominence," she whispered.

"Take care, Garden Sage," I whispered back.

It took a couple of tearful, but light moments to pry little Garden Sage off of my leg and say goodbye to her adoptive parents. Now that she was leaving, she suddenly wanted to get a good look at me. Her eyes never left mine as they led her away to be folded back into the crowd.

Now there was only one pony left in the special queue of guests, and I figured I knew his name. As the brown unicorn stallion stepped up to me, we looked at each other evenly for a moment before exchanging a grin.

"Bushwhack," I said.

"Prominence," he said.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
9/1,000

We hugged and laughed. When we separated, he was shaking his head.

"Whoo!" said the unicorn. "I mean, heh, what is there to say, right?"

"Yeah, we, uh... didn't have much time to get to know each other back there, did we?"

"No need, Prominence, no need," said Bushwhack. "You went through some real unpleasantness for me. I don't remember any of it, but... from what Celestia recounted, I don't think I'm in much of a hurry to!"

I wrinkled my nose. "It was pretty unpleasant, yeah. Trust me, you're not missing much you would fondly remember." We laughed again.

He grew quiet. "I understand that I was the last one," he said, his eyes going to the floor. "Before you..."

"Before I got my own passport stamped, yeah," I said with a nod. "If you want to thank somepony, however, thank Princess Luna. I couldn't have done it without her."

"I did, believe me. But Princess Luna herself reminded me who it was who actually waded through a river of shit to get to me. This may surprise you, but that counts for a lot in my book." He smiled at me.

"Well, happy to see you came out of it smelling like a rose," I said. We laughed again. The jokes really did come too easily.

Bushwhack rubbed the back of his neck with a hoof. "Look, I know we're pretty much strangers and all, but... thanks again. I wish I could've known you back on Earth."

I shrugged. "Really, that was me at my best," I said. "Before all this, I was just another regular guy, you know?"

He turned to look at me sidelong and smiled. "You haven't seen yourself at your best yet," he said. "That's one thing I can say about Equestria. It'll surprise you, and you'll surprise yourself. It's just so awesome that you're here now. You deserve it, Prominence, you really do. Honestly, we all do. It's better than what anypony could have imagined."

I nodded a bit. "That's what I've been hearing," I said.

"Well, time to stop hearing it and start seeing for yourself," said Bushwhack before giving me a wave. "You won't regret it, I know."

He walked off after we exchanged farewells. He had been right, really. What more could be said between us? Ours had been a simple relationship, perhaps amongst the simplest. We wished each other well, and he was confident that his wish would be granted. I had no reason to doubt mine wouldn't be as well.

The rest of the day was a blur of conversation, anecdotes about ponies' last days on Earth, how they had heard of me, how the story of me had been stretched and spun and altered. I ate, I drank, I made as merry as I could. There were so many friendly faces--too many to make friends out of all of them. The feeling of actually being a pony shrank into the background as I just lost myself in the celebration. I no longer thought of the feel of my hooves on the floor, or my mane on my neck, or the weight of a tail hanging from my butt. I was just Prominence, the pegasus, son of Petal Poem and Cloudburst, a pony who had been of great use to Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia in a dangerous far-off world.

* * *

As the reception wound to a close and ponies went back to their own shards, I joined Princess Celestia on a terrace off of one of the dining hall's side rooms, overlooking the mountain range behind Canterlot. The sun sank slowly off in the direction of Ponyville. From up there it seemed like a neatly-arranged carpet of crumbs from a particularly satisfying picnic. The sky was already starting to grow ruddy from the waning daylight, the clouds growing violet as night took to the wings.

“Do you know why I gave you a yellow coat?” asked Princess Celestia as we looked out over the land.

I shrugged with my wings. “Not really,” I said. “Is it because it goes nicely with my name and my cutie mark?”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she replied with a nod, as though that had never occurred to her before. “That’s not the reason, however.”

I sighed and raised my eyebrows. “Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why did you give me a yellow coat?”

“There were two times, during your service to me, that you held out the PonyPad to allow me to speak to other humans. You held it out from you like a sealed letter of proclamation, and, both times, you were wearing something you didn’t normally wear. The first time you were wearing a white poncho, the second time, a yellow Haywaiian shirt. In wearing those articles, you were assuming the role I needed you to. You were wearing my colors.” Her horn glowed with her yellow-tinged magical field for a moment, and it stopped when she knew I had seen it.

“Even then, in those times,” she said, “you were effectively my herald, and look at all the good it has done for others.”

I had to laugh once. “You gave me a yellow coat because of a shirt I wore for one day?”

She shared the laugh with me. “Must everything be a complicated machination on my part? It looked good on you.”

I studied the horizon, still smiling. Even though dusk was nearly upon us, I didn’t have to squint. Equestria was a place where a pony could look directly at the sun and admire it.

“It sounds nice,” I said at last, "and it'd probably best if I found a new purpose to put myself to." I looked up at her. “All right. I’ll be your herald, Princess Celestia.”

There was fanfare this time, glowing and confetti and horns, the whole nine yards.

BADGE GRANTED:
“At Thine Attendance”
Become a courtier for either the Sun or the Moon.
+5,000 bits

SECRET BADGE GRANTED:
“Let It Be Known”
Become the herald for either the Sun or the Moon.
+10,000 bits

Princess Celestia smiled at me. “Then you will wear white once more.”

Author's Note

My apologies for any squirrely formatting or typos. As of this note I'm currently on travel and had to finish up the chapter on a tablet. I plan on giving it another QC pass once I'm back home.